Shirotatsu's Absence and Return Options

[Shirotatsu]

I am here, currently alone, and with an explanation for my absence over the summer. I wouldn't exactly say there are always good reasons for absences, but surely there are reasons nonetheless. What follows is a rather brief, but somewhat thorough journal of my life for the past month and a half.

To be honest, I've forgotten about a lot of my board life on any message board that I was a regular member of in the last couple months because of some occurrences in my college life that, for the past couple months, have made living comfortably and free from worry or anxiety or something quite difficult.

To put it briefly, the last couple of months have consisted of trying to resolve a conflict between myself and my roommates which was amazingly hard because of our unwillingness to communicate and what seems to be their lack of the knowhow to solve problems in a calm, timely, adult manner. To further add to the strangeness of this problem is the common and down-to-earthness of the conflict between us, whose solution was simply to sit down, talk a little, come to a consensus about who does what, gets what, what can be used and what can be used, and all that sort of thing. Were it for something of a greater magnitude, I probably would have understood the length of time it took to solve the problem, but it wasn't. The problem grew because they either thought that they were being nice by NOT pointing out what they didn't like or simply because they were waiting for that tipping point in which they stopped being "annoyed" or "frustrated" and instead became flat out "angry."

By the time they finally decided to tell me what was going on, they just literally exploded on me, out of nowhere, in front of one of my friends, and furthermore at an inconvenient time (that is to say, that they chose a time to explode on me when there wasn't time to have a good discussion - our friends were coming over within five minutes).

Well, that made me really depressed and I ended up avoiding them for a month and a half. During the first week of my avoidance, I really tried to discover what it was about me that was annoying them ("annoying" is one of the descriptions they used for me) and went and read up on ways to maintain good roommate relations, how to solve problems, and a lot of things. I was really trying to rectify the situation and by wonderful chance, my school library had a book which approached the problem briefly, but in an effective, thorough, witty, and just plain inspirational manner. After reading that, I was really pumped to go solve our problem...

But, being me, and how I like to type up giant e-mails to send to those concerned about urgent issues, I went and created a rather lengthy e-mail with everything that I wanted to say in it, mostly for fear of screwing up in an actual second confrontation. Some talks with some friends later, I decided to scrap the idea and directly ask (though still through e-mail) with no detail other than my free times to meet up and talk. I get a response a couple of days later with perhaps the rudest and most thoughtless e-mail I have received in my life. This messes with my mind some more, pushing me further into this depression, and actually actively seeking to move out, rather than just avoiding my roommates.

Then comes a month of staying at home (commuting to school) and out-right avoidance. Towards the end of this month's period, I get my formerly 80% dysfunctional computer to work 99% properly and as my offline and online social life continued to deteriorate from avoidance of the apartment, I turned to Ragnarok Online where I rejoin members of a guild I was in that disbanded and proceeded to build myself up again there. And obviously, this led to becoming inactive (or much more inactive) in things I used to do, and spending most of my time there.

We meet sometime later under resident assistant supervision, conclude that the only way we can live together is by staying out of each other's ways, and on goes life. This takes me to the present day, in which I'm living in my apartment again, staying out of their ways, and trying to build myself back to myself.

This conflict of my life has now been concluded for two weeks. I present here more than a gist of what happened, but I would like for it to remain simply a presentation. I am over this conflict and would like not to talk much about it anymore. I have learned a few things from this though...the first and most important probably being that if I choose to room with someone I know from somewhere, I should spend more time with him, get to know him, and judge whether or not he is a good person to share an apartment or dorm with for an entire year. Conflicts like this should not have to happen, so one more thing I have to do is talk with my future roommates and together lay out our general duties and rules and whatnot so that we can live peacefully, enjoyably, and overall without conflict for a great year.

If anyone wants to know how I'm doing now, I'm fine. I'm seeking a better group of people to hang out with on campus so that I can find truly good friends, joining communities where I think I would fit in, and am back in my martial class.

Thus ends my reason. Greetings again, Magic Knight Rayearth Forum and its members, I hope to see you all again in the near future.

[Shiidou Hikaru]

First of all, welcome back Shiro-chan! Its good to see you again! *huggles*

It sounds like you've been through quite a learning experience with your (ex?)roommates. People certainly are strange creatures. Socially, they can be like chemical reagents that can be very happy and benign when left alone, but when mixed together can react violently or even sometimes produce something new and wonderful. So much of what you've written is true, so I know that you've learned a great deal from this experience and I'm sure that things will go much better for you next time.

Just for me personally, I've never found you annoying and I've always enjoyed having you here Shiro-chan. Sometimes I've found you to be a little shy, but it's not something that I would push you to change. Friendships that are slowly cultivated with a sense of trust built up over time are always the most rewarding of all. Please come by and see us (well mostly just me these days ;;) again soon!

[Shiidou Hikaru]

Eeepers, don't turn him into a tactical reconnaissance specialist or something like that. ;;

I really think that Shiro-chan learned a lot from this experience even if the end outcome wasn't the most desirable conclusion. It's a good thing to learn from our mistakes and to take a different approach next time.

[UmiRyuuzaki]

Welcome back... continue to enjoy your stay here with us...

[Shirotatsu]

(Ah...for some reason the quote tags aren't working properly for me. Please excuse the messiness of the following.)

[quote]It doesn't sound like any conflict was resolved personally. Without more details it would seem to me it was basically a Many based power struggle with a pair of gutless people who even as a Many didn't really have any guts.[/quote]

No conflict was resolved personally - it was done through mediation with a Community Advisor, which was basically a half-assed attempt to get us to live together. Just like any conversation one doesn't want to engage in intelligently, it was basically a meeting filled with "yeah" "uh-huh" "right" with nothing real getting done other than a non-involved asking "So you guys live together now right?" to people who were unwilling to work things out personally from the beginning, and not promoting intelligent conversation in which all problems were laid out and possible solutions posed. We're really no better than we started. The only thing I can do now is to avoid possible future conflicts by making sure that I can't be held responsible for something that may "happen" in the apartment - essentially, I am no longer part of their world so any conflicts that come up don't involve me.

Cowardly? Becoming of a weakling? Guess so. But I'm not gonna work things out with what is essentially a wall. I can't win this fight; I've tried, failed, that's that. The time to enter the battleground once again is when I have new roommates, or to be more accurate, apartment mates. And when that time comes, time to put a year's worth of fostering relationship proactivity into practice.

[quote name='Batou' date='Nov 17 2008, 06:42 PM' post='72017']
Learning you can be stepped on doesn't tell you anything about how to prevent it, yes or no? RPGs give positive reinforcement based almost purely on time investment in a very smart version of reeling a person along. MMORPGs change that very little unless you are really there just for the MMO networking part of the equation. I qualify suddenly going heavy on that stuff is roughly equivalent to giving into drugs, albeit easier to walk away from in the long view.

Somebody grabbing for those kinds of crutches does themselves no service.
[quote]

Yes, you can call it roughly equivalent to drugs and I won't deny it, especially given how I treated it in its early stages. Nothing to defend here or whatever. Just going to say that I am now really there primarily for the networking aspect of it.

[quote name='Batou' date='Nov 17 2008, 06:42 PM' post='72017']
Sorry, but I'm gonna call a spade a spade Shiro-san was sooo moping.
[/quote]

[quote name='Batou' date='Nov 7 2008, 06:45 PM' post='71890']
Stop moping like a weakling and pull yourself together. Start setting up networks so you you effectively have spies in people like this' circles if it could happen again.
[/quote]

[quote name='Batou' date='Nov 17 2008, 06:42 PM' post='72017']
The only way he can react effectively to this kind of thing is if he can spot it in advance and kill it early. Unless he gets roommates man enough to not act like a bunch of spineless spoiled weaklings and actually air their grievances early in a reasonable manner. But then if that was a reasonable expectation this type of thing would never happen, now would it?

Blues will give you warnings, before they just rip into you. Not that people necessarily take them seriously until they find that person they thought was just a pushover is anything but the hard way... Ah the joys of dealing with large brats that cannot take a hint.
[/quote]

[quote name='Shiidou Hikaru' date='Nov 8 2008, 11:38 AM' post='71891']
Eeepers, don't turn him into a tactical reconnaissance specialist or something like that. ;;
[/quote]

It's good advice to know. Particularly because it allows me to be proactive in such a situation for any possible future occasions rather than sitting down, moping, moping some more and then letting things get worse. This is, of course, provided that I actually notice a problem right from the start, which was not the case here. Batou probably means an active setting up of networks, which is something that I haven't done, though people who have been outside-involved (that is to say, people who had gotten wind of the situation either indirectly from someone or to whom I had spoken) have acted like "spies in people's circles," though rather after the fact and not early enough to tell me anything useful before then.

But as it is, this conflict is over, I am over the conflict, and I am trying to pulling myself together. Moping phase over and not going back into it! Not now and not in the future. This largely lies in the back of my mind now and only comes back on trigger. Well, for the sake of that future, I'll keep what you've said in mind.