2019-10-08 - Coming back around 
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 Hi, gopher-friends,
 
 Its been a little  while since I posted, I kind of  find it hard to
 believe that I didn't post at all in the month of September.
 
 Sometimes, life gets in the way,  for us that was the kids starting
 back in school. This  was a big year for us, as one  of our kids is
 on-spectrum, and this was his start into secondary school (equiv of
 middle  school in  the US,  I believe).  There have  been tantrums,
 there have been tears, but we've come through it all pretty okay, I
 guess.
 
 Of course,  we've had the  ongoing difficulties with  our daughter,
 things have improved dramatically since the last time I wrote about
 it, but they're still not easy, or settled. Not by a long stretch.
 
 In the middle  of all of this, of  course, I had to go  and make it
 more  difficult for  myself. I'd  been playing,  off and  on, on  a
 minecraft server for the best part four years. I (thought) I'd made
 friends  there, it  was a  place I  liked to  hang out.  Then, this
 summer past, a new applicant who was both on-spectrum and very open
 about it, was rejected by  the veteran server members. These people
 thought that he `wouldn't fit` in their little clubhouse.
 
 Added to  that, they made changes  on how the server  was operated,
 which led  to a serious dimunition  in the quality of  play-life. I
 aired my  grievances about this,  and, naturally, i was  kicked off
 the server by  the same people who'd already  excluded the autistic
 person. A couple  of those `veterans` were older  people, some with
 links to law enforcement, and  they'd been loudly complaining about
 my pro-drug comments in chat, some  to my `face`, mostly by whining
 to the admins.
 
 I don't  think I have any  complaints about it, not  really. Things
 just came  to a point where  their mindset and mine  were no longer
 compatible. It  would have been nice  to be able to  say goodbye to
 some people - I've no way to contact them IRL.
 
 Its easy  to say that now,  of course, weeks after  the fact. Truth
 is, it  hurt a lot  to be so rejected  by people, a  rejection that
 naturally fed  into my existing  psychological issues. It's  been a
 tough month.
 
 I've  been playing  since  on the  Unofficial Tildeverse  Minecraft
 Server,  and  I'm quite  enjoying  myself.  Sure, the  crowd  seems
 younger than I'm  used to, but that's  okay too. I do  get a little
 lonely there though,  it would be nice to have  more people to play
 along with.
 
 I think I'm going  to try to post more, to be  more present here in
 the 'verse. I have been keeping in  touch, now and then, and I have
 a lot of new reading to do.
 
 Until the next time.