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Blogs by Vena McGrath
Chat Rooms 4/30/2007 1:56:52 PM
The addiction that is hard to throw off; that need, or is it a habit to enter the same room night after night? My visits to chat began again in late January with an occasional 'drop in and drop out'. Lately I've been going in most nights to the same room and staying for varying times. Not that I chat that much as I'm usually playing cards or a game I like on top of the room.
On Sunday night I realised that the old addiction, or habit, had returned and even though it wasn't like before with the hours I used to spend there, I was still making the visit regularly at night. After making a few tongue in cheek comments I was set upon by a group of women in the room, one of whom asked me why I was always so bitter. She maintained, with her group of back-ups, that chat was just a fantasy and a way they could escape reality. My chat style didn't suit their agenda as I prefer to talk about things that I think matter - the significant thing being they were things that I thought mattered and these people did not.
So I sat quietly then and played my games while I thought about chat and asked myself why I bothered to go there if all I was going to be subjected to was a group in a 60s room that wanted nothing more than to play fantasy games with each other. The chat that I spent so much time in a few years ago was markedly different to what it is today. The people I traded comments with are mostly gone and the new breed have decided that chat should be how they want it and look out anyone that tries to sway the mood in another direction. If you don't want to flirt or just say hi and bye all night long, then you don't belong.
Being a strongly individual person with a mind that likes to ask questions and voice opinions, I find that chat no longer suits me, and I no longer suit the majority. There isn't even a choice of rooms to visit anymore as the new breed have taken over the few rooms that have numbers up on the board. Most rooms have only 1 or 2 people in them, or robots.
Last night I left the computer turned off until I had watched a couple of things on TV, and then I started to work on my writing. There were changes to be made to my website as I like to keep it up to date. Amazing how the time flew and how much I actually accomplished in that time, with never a thought of going into chat.
The agenda for tonight is the same - doing the things that matter to me even if those things are only seen by the few. After watching the chat under my game screen on Sunday night I realised once again that I had changed, those in the room are still the same. The same people night after night in a room playing silly games with each other. I could write the script easily as I khow all the back and forth banter. The idiocy of it and the fact that it keeps people supposedly happy amazes me.
I wonder about the lives of these people, many of whom are married or have partners. What is missing in their relationships that they sit at a computer when their other half is either watching TV, using another computer, or in bed? Same ole same ole and you can't fit a square peg into a round hole; so it's time for me to absent myself again because in the couple of years I was away from mainstream chat nothing has changed. What drove me away from chat has done the deed once again.
It's strange how addiction gets a hold over a life and how it can return to grab you again even though you think you have beaten it. You know why you let go and yet something inevitably pulls you back for another look. Is it hope that things may have changed and you will find what was once there for you? I ask myself a lot of questions about why and I know the answers. But I still go looking now and then and end up where I am today - resolved to get on with things that matter to me and leave the rest to their nights of childishness.
I could write a book about chat - oh I did lol, silly me. If you visit my website www.secretslieschat.net.au you can read a bit about that book and the eBook I have now published - a revised version of that book Secrets, Lies & Chat.
Time to get ready for another day at work. So until next time, take care.
