Well, wee little Haggis has been sent on his merry way. He is a little stuffed Scottish sausage (stuffed with fluff as opposed to the more traditional filling) who travels the world visiting members of The Older Gamers who signed up to participate as hosts; he first started his travels in 2006.
He has a tendency to get stuck at some folks houses for a long time and didn't make it here till almost two years after I signed up. He stayed here for almost three full months. Yes, I am a terrible procrastinator. I had many mixed feelings about having the little fellow around, having quit TOG in December 2007, but he seemed oblivious to the fact he was in an exile's home (or maybe he was just being polite). If he noticed my in-game tag was not TOG, or the different cape I wore in Guild Wars, he kept it to himself.
But having to visit the old TOG site to send private messages to those in the Haggis visiting chain (since I can't see the forums) reminded me why I don't really mind being gone so much. That site is still excruciatingly slow to load! Also I found it amusing and mildly annoying that the admins have locked me out of making changes to my profile. Back in December when I first quit, the admins stripped my profile. So in January when I noticed, I added a small discreet link to my XFire contact info (XFire is a chat program popular among gamers). It remained there for a few months and was still there when I was contacted about being next in line for Haggis.
But now recently one of the participants contacted me by private message about getting Haggis on to a wedding, and I was surprised when she said I was hard to get ahold of. And I looked, and sure enough, my contact info had been removed, and this time, I was locked out of making any changes to my profile at all.
So now the last of my obligations to TOG are fulfilled. I have entered Haggis's notes on his new blog (each participant gets the log-in in turn, but his first blog was started by someone else who is also, like me, no longer a member of TOG - and who I suspect was the one who changed the password on Haggis's first blog) and have mailed him off to the next host.
I said I would host Haggis, and I made good on my word. There are many members there who deserve to still have their fun, who are oblivious to the issues with the hierarchy there, as I once was, until I was spurned when the new leader who took my place turned out to be a control freak (that had only joined because of my very own writings that had been published by the game manufacturer), and I balked against his rantings and tried to protect the history I had worked to preserve there of kind, gentle and relaxed predecessors like Halc and Ghostjammer - and for my troubles the admins took the newbie's side and turned me away. No, I'm not bitter. Not bitter at all.
I thought I was over the hurt, but having Haggis around reopened old wounds, especially having discovered the insult of having my profile locked, as if I am some type of criminal. I was always diplomatically careful to never place the Hope tag on my XFire name (as that was the source of one of the controversies when we left - some of my more exuberant friends were blatantly placing our new guild tag on their signatures and XFire names - so I, to avoid the very appearance of imprudent behavior, refrained from doing so), so there was no reason for my XFire contact info to be removed even according to their policies - and I became an expert on their policies during my time as a Division Captain.
I don't think I've signed up for anything else there in the past that I haven't already completed. So that's that. My obligations are fulfilled. Maybe I should have fed Haggis to that hawk there after all.
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