Chatterbox: Down to Earth

The CB is awesome. The people are nice, supportive,
friendly, creative. The admins work hard to make it a safe place for young
people.

So please remember that as you read through the rest of this
post. I am not trying to offend anyone or say that the CB is a bad place and we
should all leave or make a bunch of new rules; the CB is a lot of fun

But... I think I'm going to leave. Again. I've been taking a
break for a while and decided to extend that indefinitely. I'll pop back in and
post here and there but not a huge amount.

So here are my reasons for leaving, 1 and 3 in particular:

1. Being busy-- I don't have a monstrous workload for
school, really, but I have a lot of my own DIY projects going on as well as
many extracurriculers. Besides, I tend to obsess over things, and it's hard for
me not to scroll through threads for half an hour at a time without even
posting.

2. Writing-- I originally joined to be part of the writing,
but nothing really ever finishes (not that I ever finish my own projects...)
and I kind of prefer working on things independently. (On that note, Scylla, I
am so, so, sorry about your G&G rollplay! I put off writing for it and when
I finally decided to do something it hadn't progressed much and was several
pages into the inkwell). Don't get me wrong-- there are awesome writers on here
and I know it has helped people develop their writing skills-- but I think I
need to push in other directions (actually sitting down and working on my
novel, for one thing...).

Perhaps later I'll come back and make a ski lodge or CBer
story (that would be a lot of fun and I have some ideas, but at the moment I
don't think I have the diligence or the writing skills to make that work).

3. People-- The people on the CB are a lot of what makes it
a great place. Probably a couple of
years earlier I would have loved this place even more and clung to it, because
I hardly had any friends at all, and those I did didn't share my interests in
writing and creating. But I have been blessed with some wonderful friends over
these past few years and would like to invest more in our relationships and
projects than those over the internet.

4. People (again)--  Sometimes it seems like people jump to
conclusions in discussions too quickly; maybe someone says something a little
less than tactfully, and someone else thinks the first person is trying to
offend them and that they have to put up their defenses. This can result in misunderstandings
and arguments. (Is it just me, or has this been happening a lot more recently than it did, say, in April?) I have really wanted to start a conversation on prejudice based on
race or gender, topics of a lot of personal importance to me, but
conversations on such serious subjects seem like they could easily turn
into arguments and hurt feelings. Which doesn't always happen, isn't unique to the CB by any means, and isn't a huge bother to me (again, 1 and 3 are
really my main reasons for leaving). Oh well. 

All in all, the Chatterbox is what it's meant to be and has been so for me: a place
to be creative, improve writing skills, hang out, explore ideas, and have fun.
But I think that for me personally I should work more on doing those things
with people in real life... and off the computer screen :P!

Finally, Admins, please try not to censor that much... I would like people to know what I am thinking about and my reasons for leaving. I've tried hard not the be offensive and do not bear any ill will towards the CB (in fact, quite the opposite!). Thank you!