"The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated."
I decided to make a separate thread, so the other one could be moved on from. Apologies in advance for no tl;dr on this, but it can't easily be summarized.
I've been starting to catch up on various things finally, both real world and online, and stumbled across a thread...about my own apparent death, which was later thankfully revoked to some degree. The fact that thread even exists though, I felt it was necessary to make a proper response to clear a few things up beyond saying "I'm not dead", especially in regards to some of the implications that come from the health complications I've dealt with ongoing.
While I have not gotten all of the details yet outside of what has already been posted in the forums, the assumption of my death resulted from a combination of what a handful of people knew about the reality of my situation, and one person unfortunately lying, saying they had seen my name listed in the Seattle obituaries. On that, I will say if I do someday pass, my last name will not be listed as "Waymaker" as that has been a pen name of sorts I've used on/off over the years.
The important point here being though: when it comes to something as complicated as death, be sure to always get confirmation from a reliable/direct source rather than believing the words of someone who wouldn't have had direct contact with me (or my family). I keep a usb flash drive in my bank deposit box with a few important passwords and a few requests if something happens. What I noted for MassiveCraft is, if something does happen to me, they should send out an email to a small list of contacts directly from my private email explaining what happened (the few people here who have the email address already know what it is). My family knows I've been involved in a few game communities over time, so they do understand it's important to me.
People who are faint of heart about medical things should just skip this paragraph. This next part is a little tricky. I will talk a bit about my health to make things clearer. It's not something I wanted to publicly talk about, but considering all the confusion it seemed fair to make this the one exception. I deal with a number of digestive complications that most notably cause ulcerations and internal bleeding, amongst other things. I've been dealing with it for around 10 years now. This comes from my overly ambitious immune system not only attacking the bad stuff, but working overtime and attacking my own body too. Anywhere in my digestive system, which is from a person's mouth down to their rear end (the pathway of food) can have issues. It can be pretty painful at times. I had surgery around a year back to try to help with it. Furthermore, the different medications I've taken can cause their own side effects long-term. Those medications also (attempt) to keep my immune system suppressed. This has made both my liver and kidneys act up occasionally. As of about 3 months ago, I have a new symptom which has caused some minor hemorrhaging (basically "visible" internal bleeding also) a couple of times in places not connected to my digestive system.
That's still putting it all fairly simply, but that should be good enough to summarize it. All that being said, my body seems to be pretty stubborn about not dying, otherwise it would not have held in this long already. Since every person is different in terms of how they react to health issues or medications in general, some kind of arbitrary year-to-year survival % would be impossible to know, but the odds of death are not high enough for it to be a constant focus right now. It'll be more of a concern 10-20 years down the road when they, hmm...run out of stuff to remove (is about the nicest way I can say that haha). At that point things will get very interesting. Maybe they'll have developed some fancy cybernetics or something to replace my digestive system by then.
I'm very much aware of my own mortality and it's not something worth dwelling on, as there's better things worth putting that attention towards. I came to terms with it many years ago. My conclusion being: people have little control when it comes to dying, but they can control how they live their lives. That's why I approach the game the way I do and try to keep things enjoyable for both myself and the people around me. I do appreciate that people try to be supportive through showing concern, but what I appreciate most is being able to hang out in-game and at times forget about my health entirely for a while.
In closing, I have not decided how I'll approach the game long-term moving forward. I can say that taking a break from any kind of faction leadership would be a good thing, as it's too difficult to keep a group together when I can't predict what my health will do week-to-week at this point. And I also feel it's unfair to a group to have a leader that can't semi-regularly be around all the time to support the faction. Good intentions and staying lowkey about my health, doesn't change the fact my health is still a factor. I'll probably dial down my building ambitions for now and keep it pretty relaxed. I'm considering doing some more music composition on the side and maybe writing books in-game again. I still enjoy the game and server, so I plan to continue lurking around as I tend to do at the very least.
Hopefully that clears up what my status is in regards to a number of things. I am not dead and the attempted plan is to keep it that way.
I decided to make a separate thread, so the other one could be moved on from. Apologies in advance for no tl;dr on this, but it can't easily be summarized.
I've been starting to catch up on various things finally, both real world and online, and stumbled across a thread...about my own apparent death, which was later thankfully revoked to some degree. The fact that thread even exists though, I felt it was necessary to make a proper response to clear a few things up beyond saying "I'm not dead", especially in regards to some of the implications that come from the health complications I've dealt with ongoing.
While I have not gotten all of the details yet outside of what has already been posted in the forums, the assumption of my death resulted from a combination of what a handful of people knew about the reality of my situation, and one person unfortunately lying, saying they had seen my name listed in the Seattle obituaries. On that, I will say if I do someday pass, my last name will not be listed as "Waymaker" as that has been a pen name of sorts I've used on/off over the years.
The important point here being though: when it comes to something as complicated as death, be sure to always get confirmation from a reliable/direct source rather than believing the words of someone who wouldn't have had direct contact with me (or my family). I keep a usb flash drive in my bank deposit box with a few important passwords and a few requests if something happens. What I noted for MassiveCraft is, if something does happen to me, they should send out an email to a small list of contacts directly from my private email explaining what happened (the few people here who have the email address already know what it is). My family knows I've been involved in a few game communities over time, so they do understand it's important to me.
People who are faint of heart about medical things should just skip this paragraph. This next part is a little tricky. I will talk a bit about my health to make things clearer. It's not something I wanted to publicly talk about, but considering all the confusion it seemed fair to make this the one exception. I deal with a number of digestive complications that most notably cause ulcerations and internal bleeding, amongst other things. I've been dealing with it for around 10 years now. This comes from my overly ambitious immune system not only attacking the bad stuff, but working overtime and attacking my own body too. Anywhere in my digestive system, which is from a person's mouth down to their rear end (the pathway of food) can have issues. It can be pretty painful at times. I had surgery around a year back to try to help with it. Furthermore, the different medications I've taken can cause their own side effects long-term. Those medications also (attempt) to keep my immune system suppressed. This has made both my liver and kidneys act up occasionally. As of about 3 months ago, I have a new symptom which has caused some minor hemorrhaging (basically "visible" internal bleeding also) a couple of times in places not connected to my digestive system.
That's still putting it all fairly simply, but that should be good enough to summarize it. All that being said, my body seems to be pretty stubborn about not dying, otherwise it would not have held in this long already. Since every person is different in terms of how they react to health issues or medications in general, some kind of arbitrary year-to-year survival % would be impossible to know, but the odds of death are not high enough for it to be a constant focus right now. It'll be more of a concern 10-20 years down the road when they, hmm...run out of stuff to remove (is about the nicest way I can say that haha). At that point things will get very interesting. Maybe they'll have developed some fancy cybernetics or something to replace my digestive system by then.
I'm very much aware of my own mortality and it's not something worth dwelling on, as there's better things worth putting that attention towards. I came to terms with it many years ago. My conclusion being: people have little control when it comes to dying, but they can control how they live their lives. That's why I approach the game the way I do and try to keep things enjoyable for both myself and the people around me. I do appreciate that people try to be supportive through showing concern, but what I appreciate most is being able to hang out in-game and at times forget about my health entirely for a while.
In closing, I have not decided how I'll approach the game long-term moving forward. I can say that taking a break from any kind of faction leadership would be a good thing, as it's too difficult to keep a group together when I can't predict what my health will do week-to-week at this point. And I also feel it's unfair to a group to have a leader that can't semi-regularly be around all the time to support the faction. Good intentions and staying lowkey about my health, doesn't change the fact my health is still a factor. I'll probably dial down my building ambitions for now and keep it pretty relaxed. I'm considering doing some more music composition on the side and maybe writing books in-game again. I still enjoy the game and server, so I plan to continue lurking around as I tend to do at the very least.
Hopefully that clears up what my status is in regards to a number of things. I am not dead and the attempted plan is to keep it that way.
