I was watching a drama where the hard work of generations was in danger of being ruined in a day. And I ended up thinking a bit about how much I had done for Syzygy before it was robbed from me. Like, quantitatively. Every day, recruitment needs to be done. Someone is upset about something that probably needs to be dealt with so it doesn’t build up. Bosses need to be studied. Characters need to be maintained. People need to be “hung out with”, to make sure they don’t feel too alienated from me or the guild in general.

I think it’s reasonable to say for the 2 years or so as gm/rl, I spent on average 8 hours a day building Syzygy up and maintaining it so it didn’t fall. I say it’s reasonable because I know there were some days I tried to take off entirely and binge watched Law and Order, while most days I dealt with stuff literally from the second I opened my eyes, to the moment I fell asleep. Even work was not something that could keep me away for more than an hour or so a day, because in that time my work required so little effort I spent most of it dealing with guild stuff anyway. And there were months where I would chronically sleep 4 to 6 hours a day in order to be able to spend more time dealing with guild stuff, so spending 20 hours a day on guild things was normal for me. So, averaging 8 hours a day over 2 years seems like a reasonable estimate. So, 365*2*8 = 5840. So let’s say I spent about 5000~6000 hours over the 2 years I was gm/rl, purely on building Syzygy and maintaining it.

How long did it take for it to be torn down? Did those who chose to send it up in flames spend an hour? Two hours? 10 hours? On their decision and the actions that led to Syzygy being destroyed?

It is so easy to tear things down. If I chose to I could ruin Syzygys (the new guild we all reformed as) in a moment. So could shandare. Indeed, even a raider could. I have seen the power of rumors and slander, and how, when utilized against sensitive people who care about integrity, it can cause such immense personal harm.

Syzygys is actually amazing right now, we really feel like a team. People chat and banter and have fun while we raid, between pulls. And then when there are issues many people speak up to say what they can personally do to make things better, or to suggest ideas about how things can be done, without creating pressure that their ideas MUST be taken. And most ideas end up being taken, and we are really, really, for the first time I’ve seen, acting as a team. This almost never happened while I was gm/rl, because in that time when people made suggestions, they were the type to demand their suggestions, and it was more a fight between egos than a team effort. And most of the rest of the group that didn’t make suggestions were the type to stay when I ensured progression was good and leave when we struggled. But now, people seem to feel that they are really a part of this place, and have a stake in it. Perhaps after our drama from before, people feel they need to make more of an effort to make this place good, because they’ve seen how easily just a few people can ruin somewhere that took others so much time over so many years to build.

Even so, even when things are so wonderful, there is still so much work to do behind the scenes. We still need to constantly recruit, and if I were doing a better job of it (I’ve been slacking this past week), I would be spending a couple hours a day on it. Then there’s the situation, imo, of the mental repercussions of the drama that happened before. Anyone remotely involved took some sort of a mental blow, and in my opinion both myself and shandare took a huge mental blow. And while people are mentally fragile, it is harder to handle things well. Yet in a moment where drama has just happened, so intense that it ruined the guild I spent so long building, forcing us to reform the guild under a different name, this is when we all need to handle things especially well. So a lot of behind the scenes work needs to be done to soothe anxieties, validate feelings, address issues, etc. Then on top of that is the regular 10~20 hours a week of boss prep that needs to be done, and characters to maintain, and the 8 hours of official raids and the 6~8 hours of unofficial raids.

However, if this moment of this type of atmosphere and teamwork can continue, I think all the behind the scenes work and effort are more than worth it. In our current world, it is so hard to find a community that emphasizes respect, consideration for others, support, teamwork, and if we can continue being such a place I think it is a jewel so precious and unique that I am indeed proud to be part of the effort to keep it safe and make it shine. But that does not take away from the fact that it does require a lot of effort. Even now, only probably spending on average 4~5 hours a day on my part helping out with the maintenance of this guild is by far on the low side of what I used to do as gm/rl and what I did before I was retraumatized a couple months ago.

It is always easier to tear a place down than build it up. But, sometimes, when what you want to build up is worth it, the hard work itself and the fear of others tearing it down is a price I would pay any day.