I'm Out to Order...Wait, Out of Order
And so did the state of affairs pass thus:
RL has been sucking. More than usual. There are various job shenanigans afoot, most of which fall under the Not Good category. Details here would be foolish of me. I've been considering a change in venue, meaning paperwork needs doing. In some cases this means multiple fill-outs of things. This is Item the First.
Item the Second would involve two OS deaths in less than a month. The first death explained itself well enough: an apparent registry corruption made most of my applications (Firefox, AIM, printer) unusable. There went money I didn't want to spend. Joy of joys. The second seemed to be just for the sheer need of reminding me that technology is fallible. While there was no charge this time around, the credit card bill decided now was a nice time to arrive--and hello, debt, thank you for pissing in my eye. Trying to make some breakthrough in the short story industry (hopes and dreams, I haz them) has been halted thanks to hard drive wipes. AIM has also chosen to be a bastard with people not on my Buddy List for reasons I have yet to puzzle out (as a side note, don't be offended if you're not on my Buddy List, people. I'm wary of people I don't talk to often regardless of how we may peripherally know each other, so making it on there's a tough job). I'm leery of updating it since the lappy just got out of the shop for the second time yesterday.
Item the Third: Stress from the above. Stress has a nasty tendency to make me very asocial. Groups of people, whether in RL or online, have never been a cup of tea from which I'm a glutton to drink. Add a little family and friend stress to the mix along with a dash of otherwise small frustrations, stir generously, and you've got a situation in which I'm prone to blowing up at people. The brain-to-mouth (or brain-to-fingers) filter goes out the window during these times. I don't want them to. Therefore, in the interests of not taking things out on people who don't deserve it, I've been sticking to speaking to people with whom I feel comfortable and leaving it at that. They understand that I can be an ass and are willing to forgive me for it. Again, don't be offended if you're not one of them. Chances are I don't know you well enough to open up and I can be slow in the 'make-new-friends-already-damn-you' department. Unless we've had some serious one-on-one time for an extended period of time, I'm not willing to label you ('general you' applying here) as a friend yet.
There are more things than this, but most of them are personal in nature and I'm not comfortable with sharing.
However, if I'm needed for something, e-mail is always an option regardless. It may take me a few days to answer, but the addy is mgn_sh [at] yahoo [dot] com. The only requests I'm going to make are that you leave out penis-enlargement ads and variants of 'OMG where are you?' Respect would also be appreciated. It might be awhile before I'm ready to rejoin group settings. I appreciate any understanding in advance.
Now, back down goes my periscope.