RolePlayGateway™

This is a topic that I'm sure we can all identify with. Though I am sure that many of you lead normal lives, I know that it is impossible that I am the only one who started writing to escape from the reality of my situation.

Admitedly, I didn't have a terrible life, but I always felt oppressed. I was always the weird kid in class, and never had many friends. Even to this day, I don't have many acquaintances outside of my family.

And so I wrote, and eventually started roleplaying. I did this because I had no desire to take part in the life i was living. I isolated myself, and my only outside contact that I bothered to maintain was with the people I'd met on the internet.

Nowadays, I'm working towards a more normal existance, trying to make friends with the people around me and such. But I still feel the need to escape every once in a while, but not as often as I used to when I was younger. I still write, but now it's more because I enjoy it.

I don't know about how the rest of you feel about this subject, but it was a very real problem for me when I was young, and I'm sure more than a few of you can understand how I feel.

This is who I am
Escapist
Paradise Seeker
Farewell, time to fly
Out of sight
Out of time
Away from our lives

*hums along to the song happily*

I think we can all relate to this in one way or another. Creative people, whether they be artists, writers, directors, ect, always have different ways of looking at the world and therefore never really fit into the rest of the society. I realized this about three years ago when I finished high school and went to an art college. In school I was always the quiet kid, the one who no one really could connect with because my thoughts were always flying off to different places. At the time I had no idea why but now looking back on it I just didn't have the interest to sit there and gossip about who was going out with who and what teacher failed someone that week. I just wanted to draw and write, to get away from the same monotone existence that was my every day life.

Role playing has quenched my thirst for that since middle school and once I started college I saw that people here think like me. We can bounce ideas off of one another, we can have conversations. We're a bunch of weird – and in some cases quirky – crazy people who sit on computers all day and animate and we love it. We have the freedom to escape reality and express ourselves 'till the cows come home and entertain others at the same time. It's great!

Everyone is an escapist to some extent or other. Whether it be through writing, drawing, music, drugs, alcohol, ect... Everyone does it. World's just too roughed up right now to spend your time immersed in all of its problems. Curiously enough, my favorite musician describes himself, plainly, as an escapist (see lyrics above ) so that's my two cents on the subject.

You sound alot like how I was. I pretty much lived online and I rarely left my room. I even reached the point to where I invited people over that live me near me that were on the forum, just to post over at my house. I was pretty much the definition of a shut in. I left my house for school and maybe to buy groceries. Even during school I only talked to the one guy who went to my school that was on the forum. It got really bad. It took my internet being shut off for a week by my parents for me to learn to be social. I learned that being social is a very good thing but you just have to find the people you wanna be social with. I grew up in an area where most of the people were very different from me and I had to go out and find people who shared my interest. I just wore my flag (showed my interests through my clothing.) Then they found me. I made one friend who introduced me to the other people I now consider my friends.

I am still an active forum member and I use it to escape when I want to. I find nothing wrong with it as long as you just make sure that you aren't doing it just to escape everything. Life is meant to be lived but everyone needs to escape. I know I do. Just try to moderate how much escaping you are doing.

I am in isolation, therefore I am.

You haven't known isolation until you see me; stuck in my room, face pratically glued to a computer screen most of the day, zero friends that aren't all online, piles of sketchbooks filled with various thoughts coming to life which mostly include monsters...I lead a pretty wasteful existance.

I'm too tired to change, too tired to do anything and too scared of the outside world to go out and work. I consider myself an agoraphobic to the extreme, not even enjoying people looking at me for prolonged peroids of time; I can barely even talk to a shop clerk in a simple exchange of money.

To me, the internet is my escape and so are my sketchbooks. Sleep I simply use to gain inspiration, a time where rest is my most loved time of the day. I don't see myself making local friends anytime soon, even though I am in college; I just see no reason as to how anybody could possibly find me interesting unless they want to see a good example of a headcase. I don't drink or smoke but I have thought about the idea of taking some sort of narcotic that isn't illegal simply to deaden my senses and make me feel able to go outside without a care in the world; if there was such thing as a self-esteem booster injection, I'd take it without hesitation.

My life is the prime example of someone who is concerned for their health but has been mentally destroyed through mental bullying, all with the belief that you're a disgusting looking being who doesn't deserve to be looked at directly by another human being.

The internet is my escape, roleplaying is my joy; I'd give anything to be somebody else.

I loath escapism.

Everything that I ever consider a problem about myself can be solved in two ways: reconsidering the nature of the problem, i.e. inherent, solvable, or abstract; or by just doing things. I'm always more productive when I'm not on the internet. Plus, I don't really miss role-playing.

I throw myself onto acting and friends and seize the day, although I'm outwardly timid. It's a damnable combination of ego and action, where action is inferior to ego. Action being interaction. I have strange interests, so I try and interest myself in the lives of other people. It's just social interaction.

There's always more to do, more to learn, more to shape you. If you ever feel aimless, consider your alternatives. Consider what made you aimless. Don't ever take what is. Now if only I followed that more often.

Now, back to being quite less than despondent.

I still use escapism, though not to the extent I used to. I have friends, many friends, in school. Before I came to this school district, I had zero friends. Now I can't even count them. Sometimes, even when you're crazy and shut out and you think nobody is ever going to like you until you grow up and show the world who's boss, all you need is a fresh start.
I still spend all my time at home online or playing video games, if for no other reason than, even though I live by the mall, I don't have the money to take my girlfriend out for dates and my only friend that lives close is also uninterested in the mall. Aside from that, there's really nothing much else to do, unless I feel like springing $11 to watch some movie I'll have to walk a half-mile to get to. Not that I mind, it's just I can interact HERE, rather than walk all the way over THERE and rot my brain with something I'll be able to rent in two months.

I thank that is why most people first get into roleplaying. It's something you can easily dive into and quickly forget about reality. While this may not always be healthy if done in excess, it isn't anything out of the ordinary. I understand how you feel.

Being the weird kid in class isn't always so bad.