Insomnia is one of the subtlest yet keenest forms of mental torture.

Every few seconds, my mind returns to the concerns and happenings of my guild. A few minutes later I realize this and forcibly wrench my mind away to think about Quark, or meditate, or try to masturbate. Then a few seconds later my mind returns to the concerns and happenings of my guild.

Hours pass, and I do not sleep. Night after night after night.

So we finally killed Argus in the weekend team, and got the rank for it. We still have 4 months or so to go until the new expansion comes out though, so we still have a good amount of time to continue farm.

And what happens? People start leaving because they want to rest and oh well screw you to everyone else who wants to continue. And other people jump ship when it’s easier to because our guild got them their kill. And almost all the rest show up and act like they’re doing us all an enormous favor by just being here, and complain about how shit their teammates are, because we’re not reclearing with ease.

Do they not realize I spend hours recruiting every day, have been for months since my public meltdown from the stress accumulating over a year happened, and which triggered one officer to quit completely and the other quit her officer job in essence? Do they not realize that in order for them to relax and just need to show up for raid and enjoy the game, others have to suffer stress and unhappiness and pressure, and work unrelentingly even through the most miserable situations (when have I ever had any time to recover from being betrayed by my officers or told that I suck by the very people I sacrifice all my time for)? So many people play this game to “have fun”, but do they not realize that to play at this level, it requires a lot of work that’s not fun, and that at least in my guild it’s work that has been almost entirely my job, with few people ever willing to help with what’s really needed? Do they not realize that their selfishness in only caring about whether or not they have fun is what causes most guilds to disband and most guild masters who try to continue to be really unhappy? People say it’s a game so the point is to have fun. What recruitment officer does so for fun? What GM deals with the drama shit that guildies find so hard to avoid for fun? And if these things aren’t all dealt with, then these gamers say “this guild is killing my enjoyment for the game, and if I can’t have fun anymore I’m not going to stay no matter how much worse it makes things for my team”.

I’ve become so much more bitter of a person than I was before I made this guild. It disgusts me to see how I see things now. I used to focus on the beauty and good in everything, and now I see selfishness and a willingness to harm those who do the most for them in almost all the people I come across in this game.

We’ve been having issues recently with some people who have gotten to feel excluded from the core of the guild. Mostly they’re people who are more likely to become defensive when others speak to them. The person I’m going to talk about today is one of these people. He’s called olbida. He’s not at all a troll (those will come later), but he does take offense very easily, and as I have not been able to spend time reassuring him and things have been building up, he’s extremely extremely sensitive now.

Now, some background on him. I do not view him as a very strong player at this moment. He makes more mechanics mistakes than I would like and his numbers need improving. However, as far as I’ve seen, when I talked to him before, he’s more than willing to put in the hard work to become more of an assets. But he is sensitive and easily defensive and is likely to want to shift blame away from himself. But if I’m careful not to trigger him when I talk to him, he’s open to my suggestions and will work to improve. Or at least he was before, I don’t know if by now he’s so upset that he won’t be willing to anymore. This is the negative side of him, from the perspective of the guild. The positive side is the following: for whatever he has recognized that our guild needs he has worked hard for. Be it getting traits by grinding on multiple specs and toons, making multiple specs and toons available to us, or donating to the guild bank, or just bring uber reliable and there for us whenever he is needed as long as he feasibly can at all. When a ton of people left and it looked like we may not succeed any longer, Olbida was there for us every step of the way. Knowing that just one person less could ruin us, he never allowed us to worry that he wouldn’t be there. When I was at my darkest and suicidal, it was people like him who were my very tiniest beacons of hope.

So, today, someone asked an unrelated person called Sautoire-Sargeras from Currently Online to message him saying “you suck”, and other such harassment. After awhile, this person told Olbida “sorry for what I wrote earlier, Tiffanie told me to write it”. Tiffanie is our guild officer, literally the person who took charge of pulling our guild together when it was on the brink of dying, and as such plays a big role in helping me become less suicidal (my plan before was to disband the guild then commit suicide).

So what are these people doing with trying to emotionally destroy one person who was already in a bad emotional state, and at the same time perform a character assassination of another person who is doing her best to keep me from committing suicide? What are they trying to accomplish? These trolls aren’t even some random teenager who doesn’t know any of us outside of seeing us on YouTube. These are people who intimately know us and know that olbida is in a particularly rough situation. Most internet trolls, at least they can hide behind the excuse of not being personally connected with those they troll, not aware that these people being trolled are actual human beings. But whomever did this knows us, has talked to us, interacted with us, is or was part of our guild. Has seen me pour out my flesh and blood for this guild, and is not actively, using planning and finding people, to act in a way that accomplishes nothing other than to sow discord in our guild. They are essentially people who will come up with an execute a scheme to hurt and ruin those who have done nothing but try to treat them well. They are people who willingly try to devastate people they know and have talked to, and who as far as I can see have done nothing at all to deserve this, and who have always tried to do their best by them.

I’ve known there are psychopaths who really just don’t care if they hurt those who treat them well. How is this action any different? I would not feel nearly as shocked if it was a random internet troll. I’m shocked because it’s a person who knows us as human beings, performing an action that is designed purely to hurt us.

I fell into depression again yesterday, and was vaguely having suicidal thoughts again. So I didn’t end up going online to deal with things. But I set my alarm clock for 6 am this morning to wake up early enough to deal with issues. The first issue, one that Deline and I think maybe fluffed and others have been complaining about for a long long time was getting a new music bot for our discord. When I woke up I checked what the guild officers had told me, and they had said they need administrator privileges to be able to add the bot they decided on. As Trihara had accidentally closed off key channels as administrator before, I had made it so no other person is administrator, even the officers, to prevent less human error. So I went to deal with the music bot, even though I have always felt this is low priority, but I also felt it was triggering Deline and contributing to why he was acting out and creating drama.

It took an hour to figure things out, and I had to test it a bit in the music channel. When it was done, I found that krotos had left me a message “not responding to anything that was brought up but then commenting often in the bot channel doesnt come off well”. I was literally confused at first because I don’t remember normally commenting on anything at all in the bot channel, though I did type some random short responses to things ppl mentioned while I was setting up the music bot. Apparently, “there are a lot of issues in the guild, lack of a leadership figure hurts these issues”. Little things like this really hurt me. Since before this tier started I’ve spent all my time outside of real life commitments and rest and sleep time doing things for this guild and this raid. It has made me depressed and suicidal doing all this stuff and having people tell me things like what krotos said, sometimes in a gang bang fashion where 20 people all listen in and take turns telling me what I do badly, even if it contradicts what others say. And I’m trying everything I can to hold myself together, and I wake up at 6 am to deal with issues, and because the first one I dealt with was the music bot (which imo is part of what caused the drama krotos was talking about, only maybe he doesn’t realize it), I’m told sarcastically in public “glad we got the important stuff sorted”, and then “was sarcasm”, and then privately told the above things, about my lack of leadership. It’s just a little thing, and I should not letit get to me, as he’s obviously only saying things from his PoV and not caring if they hurt me. But who knows if he will influence his friends who are my officers? Who knows if he’s complaining to others and making them believe that I lack leadership? I’ve had enough experience in here that I know everyone thinks I’m great but when they’re upset at stuff they’re only going to focus on my failings and allow that to become their judgement of me. And this situation is only one in a sea of things. All little things, all causing me to worry, all maybe not a big deal until they are. And emotionally and mentally, these little things add up for me. And that I allow it to do so is what makes me think that I’m not a good leader at all.

K: You use overhealing as a bandaid for everything, and is your go-to asap when anything is going badly.

Me: But recently we successfully killed a boss because we added another healer. Is that not worth it?

K: It was overhealing to compensate for people making mechanics mistakes. You should have sat the people who made those mistakes. I feel deceived, I thought this guild was focused on progression, but it feels just like you guys only want people to be happy and are willing to sacrifice progression.

Me: If I had sat the people who made the mistakes, we wouldn’t have had enough people to kill the boss. Would you have preferred that?

K: No. The problem is not having a robust enough roster. I’ve never seen a guild with attendance that’s this terrible. You need to fix our roster issues.

Me: We’re trying to do that, but while we’re doing it, we should work with what we have and try to still do well despite it, right?

K: Everyone is going to leave because of this. It’s just going to keep spiraling down. Don’t worry, I don’t think you’re fully to blame for it.

I feel lost. I feel bogged down and exhausted by trying to manage a guild. I feel sapped not just of my energy, but also of my optimism, my confidence, and the abilities I had that propelled me to excellence before. 

Managing a guild has been a constant grind of balancing the needs and desires of a bunch of people, most of whom believe their ideas are the only right ones. It’s been regularly taking hits of a personal nature: “the way you talk annoys people”, “the way you do things no wonder people would leave”, “your way may work for pugs, but it’s causing us to fail”. And then, managing a guild so far has meant I have given up all selfish and personal needs (beyond the needs like resting to maintain sustainability week in and week out), and having those I work for repay me by acting selfishly and hurting me and our guild. After all, they say, “sorry, I know this hurts you, but I want to make sure I’m happy more”.

Managing a guild has made me hate people.

So I ask myself. Where am I going? What should I do? Am I just being weak and self pitying, and I should just buck up and keep moving forward? I was told this is what true leadership is: resilience in the face of all difficulty. This past year I can say has been completely reliant on this thought. I don’t care how unhappy it makes me, I WILL see this through, I WILL keep making things better.

But I also ask myself now, if I keep going, keep trying, and stay in a position where I’m likely to be let down again and again, will I end up losing all that was great about me before? I had drive, I had the power to inspire, I had a charisma that made people want to follow me… is continuing with all these setbacks and personal attacks going to drown it all? 

Where do I go from here? Do I keep pushing forward, though every day I feel less happy to wake up? Or do I stop, and perhaps, in quitting, forego the growth every leader should go through to learn relentless perserverance? 

Where am I going? And where should I go? 

Today, I learned the importance of consistently making others feel they’re indispensable or extremely important. Even those you trust the most to not need your validation, because you may think you’re on the same page with them. Anytime you express your displeasure with them and disagree with them, is a moment that adds to where they feel they’re not valued enough by you and will end up leaving you (unless you force them to stay by some other means, money or something). 

And at the same time, I realized the value of a person who will stick by you even if you argue with them and make them feel bad. Who trusts and likes you well enough that even in your down times, when you sometimes don’t put in the effort to be nice to them no matter what, they want what’s good for you and to keep helping you.

I guess I just learned the time-honored maxim: those who love you want the best for you no matter what. And everyone else? They don’t love you. Don’t expect that you can ever relax around them or be down around them. Keep your focus and energy held high, always, around everyone else: you can show your vulnerabilities, but you must always be aware of their feelings and put that as number one.

So the time change happened, and I have to wake up an hour early for everything. Such rip. It’s not actually that early to tell the truth, it’s just 9 am instead of 10 am. It’s just the shift of time, when to sleep and such, is always a bit tiring.

In other news, I’ve been leveling my Mage these past few days. It’s been surprisingly fun and relaxing, and I actually feel motivated to want to go online now lol. Just to play her. And God is she hot. All my future toons will be Draenei. I derive too much pleasure out of knowing that my characters look good. Comes with society’s objectifying women’s bodies I guess, whenever I know I look good I’m always irrationally happy too.

As for Syzygy, sigh. I am not yet able to stem the ebb in morale. It makes me wonder if I’m no good as a leader. That I’m not able to easily find a way to boost morale. But no matter. I made my vow to my whole raid again today that as long as I’m alive, even if I’m burnt out, I will focus on keeping our guild alive. And so I will.

I forgot to write an entry earlier today. I also didn’t go over any logs or study for any bosses. I also didn’t work out, unwind, shower, have sex. I spent the whole afternoon/night recruiting. Looking at forums, websites, jotting down who to recruit. For hours. Sending the info to noci, who has been actually doing the bulk of helping me. And also getting in touch with just a small portion of them, which in itself took a couple hours. 

Tomorrow morning I’m doing a pug for 3 hours, then the weekend raid for 4. It’s all so I can recruit more. I know that until I recruit enough for us to stabilize I’m always gonna live in fear. So now I’m recruiting like crazy. Fingers crossed I get through these next few days of 7 hour raid leading and non stop recruiting relatively unscathed!!!!!

Today we were back up to 22 people. The raid went smoother. We should have killed more bosses though. We did struggle a bit here and there when we shouldn’t have. Tomorrow will be progression on star auger hopefully, even if we do skip krosus. So tonight I’ll have to study hard. Watch as many vids as possible, figure out timings to watch out for, etc.

We finished doing the achievement run after raid, or a few of us did. That was nice and relaxing, and I could again feel like I was doing well. Maybe it’s because it’s only an achievement run, with less pressure for us to not make mistakes, and that’s why I can feel that I’m doing well as a leader. During progression, anytime anyone makes mistakes more than one time, I’m likely to feel it’s my fault for not leading or making callouts better. And when we do do things well, I don’t particularly feel it’s thanks to me, even though I suppose logic would dictate it to be so, to a certain degree. But I’m more apt to just feel relief that it’s done, or to feel it’s due to everyone’s help and cooperation. Plus, after a kill I’m more focused on where to go next. Maybe I can enjoy feeling good about myself if we finish the last boss, but probably only then.

I’m still incredibly worried about recruitment. A couple of our strongest dps for the weekend group won’t be joining this weekend. Can we do it then? Will we get enough people in time? We only have 2 days left. And I still need to keep recruiting for the weekday group. Sigh. Hopefully I can find a recruitment officer soon.