Join the new world

I quit a while ago. I know how I feel about the friends I made, and ultimately I quit because so many of them did. Not so long ago, I ran into one of the people who I went to eAustria with, in hoping to FORM THE STRONG GOVERNMENT. When I quit, I thought I'd never see him again.

And then, I ran into him, right in the middle of r/starcraft. I was like "Are you really Kitchen.Sink?" And he was, indeed, the Kitchen Sink I'd grown to know, respect, and see as a worthy rival. That was back in the days of the eRepublik forums, and he was a "traitor" of sorts. He left the eUS and became a part of then "Phoenix", the PEACE successor alliance. The eUS was, at the time, under attack from all sides, the MPPs we'd trigger putting us in grave danger.

But this challenge isn't really about my relationship with one person, and to be fair, coming back, I miss the people I sparred with, and the people I worked with, more than I ever did while I was away, and I sort of wish I had been there for the last days of those forums. Maybe I could have changed something, saved the parts of the game I so loved.

But I digress again. This challenge isn't about all of you. It's about ME.

This game shaped a large part of the course of my life. I'm not sure I'm happy where I am now, but I'm probably in a much better position to get where I want because of this game. Why?

Well, you see, I spent a year at my college newspaper. My good friends, this paper, The American Imperialist, got me a job, and was probably the only reason I ever did that job.

But it also shaped my relationship's with the people around me. My girlfriend would listen to me rant for hours about the game. She couldn't care less about it, but she knew how I felt about it, and my fascination was, apparently, enough to keep her interested.

My friend's didn't care as much, and while I lost no friend's over playing a dorky online game, I'm sure I didn't make any that way, either. But it really was the friends I've missed, and I'm kinda sad I didn't say goodbye to each and every one of them via PM.

Honestly, this is a pretty bad article. It's rambling, incoherent, and altogether not my best work. I certainly don't think it deserves to win any prizes, but I wanted to write this up because it meant something to me, and because I felt like getting back into the habit of writing for TAI (The American Imperialist. Just going to abbreviate it from now on, it takes forever to type.)