A little less than a month ago, I took a break from Lojban, more specifically from the Lojban IRC channel(s). What led me to that? Well it's a long story, but I'll try to explain as much as I can. It all began several months earlier.
I've been logjammin' for a little over four years, and I've put in a lot of time, effort, passion and love. I have contributed to lots of mailing list discussions, I have translated well over 60.000 words of literature into Lojban, I have spent countless hours on IRC conversing with people in Lojban to represent it, I have helped dozens of people learn the language, I've made several videos/audio recordings that you can find on youtube, and I even created the first Lojban rap song of all time. Why did I do all this? It's simple: Love. I love Lojban, and I'm hoping that that's sort of evident seeing how much I've done with and for the language.
Now, over the years I have also acquired a lot of knowledge on the history of Lojban, mostly by reading insane amounts of mailing list threads. I thoroughly enjoyed reading them. A few of them I read multiple times, and those threads had over 500 posts in it. Day and night, Lojban was on my mind. I take a walk everyday, and when I have nothing specific to think about, my mind automatically wanders back to some Lojban topic, it's become automatic.
With so much knowledge, it was just natural that I would want to help get the language into a finalized form. When you love something as much as I loved Lojban, you want it to be in the best condition possible. You want it to shine, and you want it to be liked by others, and that means taking special measures to make it attractive to a wider audience. Those were my ambitions, anyway. The BPFK had long since vaporized, and for almost a decade the language has now been in a state that is somewhere between a coma and chaos. I wanted so badly for that to change for the better. I think you can empathize with me.
I was not the only one to want Lojban to change, nor the only one unhappy about its unclear state. Of course I wasn't. In the history of Lojban, there have always been a few people at any given time who wanted to make adjustments, fix things, reform things. They tend to get dismissed as tinkerers, who are just never happy with what they've got. So, naturally there was a small group of such tinkerers around at this point of Lojban's history as well. For tinkerers, one common activity is to openly discuss potential changes and get on everyone else's nerves who see their established system as being threatened. I was surely one of those people who had many ideas of what could be done to improve the language. Mostly, I wanted to have clear definitions for everything, something which is still only a dream, but more on that later.
After the BPFK's death (and yes, I won't stop calling it dead), Robin (camgusmis) became the only person in charge of the Lojban project. Some like to refer to him as the Benevolent Dictator For Life. Well, let's home it's not literally "for life". Not even he himself wants that. Still, it's the current situation, and has been for almost a decade. It's a sad state, so of course people like myself and other tinkerers would ignore the fact that they have no say in anything, and they'd just go ahead and talk about changes, despite there being only one person to have any rights: The Dictator.
Lojbanist gleki would always call that position "nolraitru" (king) when we talked. Seeing me propose things and expressing my opinions on things, he eventually began suggesting that I could be the new nolraitru. He kept bringing it up, too, so it seemed he was actually seriously proposing it. At first, I dismissed the idea. I knew that it was hopeless, since someone else was already "nolraitru" and he surely wouldn't just give me his power. But as happens so often, it eventually got to me. The thought of finally getting a chance to help my beloved Lojban achieve its final state of beauty. So I ended up liking the idea of "taking over". It was like someone had put an idea in my mind and it was too late too get rid of it. I had to go for it, somehow. So I slowly began to ask a few people on IRC what they thought about me becoming nolraitru. I operated quite cautiously. I could have written a huge mailing list announcement like "I am offering to take over. Say yes, if you want Lojban to be complete!", but I wasn't exactly convinced anybody there would say yes. Even after all this time, I felt people still didn't really give me any credit. Thus, I limited my aspirations to the IRC channel first. tsani, who was basically among the aforementioned group of tinkerers, said he wouldn't mind my being nolraitru, despite our differences. I'm not sure who else expressed approval, but overall, it wasn't much. More importantly, the people whose opinions weighed the most clearly stated that they "don't want Lojban to change", and Robin himself let me know quite clearly that he would not let me take over, since I am "too much of a tinkerer". So there I had it: proof that all the effort and love I had thus far put into Lojban got me no more than anyone else had got. I was just another random tinkerer. Out to destroy the language.
Let me stress again how much Lojban meant to me all this time. It meant everything to me.
For many, Lojban is just a hobby on the side. But for me, Lojban for a long time had been the number one priority in my life. And that's just crazy. And then, to get so little in return; it kind of makes you wonder if it's all worth it. Heck, not only get so little in return, but to also have other people think that I would willfully destroy this language I love so much if I were given the chance; that was just a very painful experience. And it was the reason I eventually got so bitter and sad; the fact that the help I was willing to offer was not the kind of help people were willing to accept from me. It really hurt.
Looking back, I can now simply say that they missed their chance. I'm not exaggerating when I claim that I could have finished the whole damn documentation of the language within only a few months. But well, they apparently thought I was just going to change the language willy-nilly according to my own wishes only. They were wrong. I would have been a moderator, first and foremost. I would have steered the long overdue discussions and I would have made sure to see them through to completion, culminating in a complete description of the language that incorporates all the many things we as a community have learned over the years. A language that we could have been proud to show to newcomers. They missed their chance. Now I'll just wait patiently.
What happened next?
To tell you the truth, leaving the channel was hard. I'd been on it 24/7 for years. It was like cutting off an arm. But I had to take a break. I was starting to give off negative vibes without realizing it. My sadness was radiating and right then I realized that I could no longer allow this. I quit the channel.
The first few days after that, I still could not stop thinking about Lojban. It was crazy. In fact, it seemed as though I was thinking about Lojban even more intensively for those few days. Cutting out IRC had somehow lifted a weight from my shoulders and mind, and my Lojban thoughts started to flow freely.
Of course, this wasn't the point of the break. What I needed was some emotional distance. I had gotten too deep into the rabbit hole the months before. I needed a change of surroundings. I needed emotional clarity. A fresh start — perhaps. A new perspective — certainly.
I managed to finally finish The Wizard of Oz a few days before christmas. When I showed my father the text, he was quite impressed. He then went on to ask a question whose core has been bugging me ever since: "Wouldn't it be nice if you could use your ability on something that more people could read?".
If you recall, I said above that I had begun to wonder if it was all worth it. Putting in so much and getting so little, isn't there something else I should be doing instead? Something that will help me make money maybe (or at least something where I'll be trusted)?
I'm still wondering about this. Sure, I can do it just because. A hobby doesn't have to pay your rent. But when that hobby takes on such monstrous proportions, I think you'd better think about it at least a little bit. When I said earlier that Lojban was the number one priority in my life, I meant it. I had my family go on vacation without me just so that I could work on Lojban. Spending so much time on something means that other things will fall short. If I at least got something for it, I wouldn't have to question it so much. I have always wanted to have a Lojban newspaper, for example. But damnit, it's a lot of work to publish one even just monthly. I am no longer convinced it would be the right thing to do to keep putting Lojban ahead of everything else like that. I can't have a job and still do Lojban 24/7. I have to make some choices, and I'm very uncertain right now. I think I have found the desired emotional distance, but there is still a way to go to find emotional clarity considering this.
But whatever my decision will be, I think this post should give you some idea of what's been going on with me recently and I hope you can better understand me now. As I'm trying to make this a fresh start, feel free to forget everything you think you knew about me and then get to know me anew. I'm in a different place now than I was.
(You may notice that I've stripped the blog down to just Lojban and Toaq Dzu. My Lojban writings can be found on www.selpahi.de, so there is no need to host them here as well.)
Please leave a comment below.
I've been logjammin' for a little over four years, and I've put in a lot of time, effort, passion and love. I have contributed to lots of mailing list discussions, I have translated well over 60.000 words of literature into Lojban, I have spent countless hours on IRC conversing with people in Lojban to represent it, I have helped dozens of people learn the language, I've made several videos/audio recordings that you can find on youtube, and I even created the first Lojban rap song of all time. Why did I do all this? It's simple: Love. I love Lojban, and I'm hoping that that's sort of evident seeing how much I've done with and for the language.
Now, over the years I have also acquired a lot of knowledge on the history of Lojban, mostly by reading insane amounts of mailing list threads. I thoroughly enjoyed reading them. A few of them I read multiple times, and those threads had over 500 posts in it. Day and night, Lojban was on my mind. I take a walk everyday, and when I have nothing specific to think about, my mind automatically wanders back to some Lojban topic, it's become automatic.
With so much knowledge, it was just natural that I would want to help get the language into a finalized form. When you love something as much as I loved Lojban, you want it to be in the best condition possible. You want it to shine, and you want it to be liked by others, and that means taking special measures to make it attractive to a wider audience. Those were my ambitions, anyway. The BPFK had long since vaporized, and for almost a decade the language has now been in a state that is somewhere between a coma and chaos. I wanted so badly for that to change for the better. I think you can empathize with me.
I was not the only one to want Lojban to change, nor the only one unhappy about its unclear state. Of course I wasn't. In the history of Lojban, there have always been a few people at any given time who wanted to make adjustments, fix things, reform things. They tend to get dismissed as tinkerers, who are just never happy with what they've got. So, naturally there was a small group of such tinkerers around at this point of Lojban's history as well. For tinkerers, one common activity is to openly discuss potential changes and get on everyone else's nerves who see their established system as being threatened. I was surely one of those people who had many ideas of what could be done to improve the language. Mostly, I wanted to have clear definitions for everything, something which is still only a dream, but more on that later.
After the BPFK's death (and yes, I won't stop calling it dead), Robin (camgusmis) became the only person in charge of the Lojban project. Some like to refer to him as the Benevolent Dictator For Life. Well, let's home it's not literally "for life". Not even he himself wants that. Still, it's the current situation, and has been for almost a decade. It's a sad state, so of course people like myself and other tinkerers would ignore the fact that they have no say in anything, and they'd just go ahead and talk about changes, despite there being only one person to have any rights: The Dictator.
Lojbanist gleki would always call that position "nolraitru" (king) when we talked. Seeing me propose things and expressing my opinions on things, he eventually began suggesting that I could be the new nolraitru. He kept bringing it up, too, so it seemed he was actually seriously proposing it. At first, I dismissed the idea. I knew that it was hopeless, since someone else was already "nolraitru" and he surely wouldn't just give me his power. But as happens so often, it eventually got to me. The thought of finally getting a chance to help my beloved Lojban achieve its final state of beauty. So I ended up liking the idea of "taking over". It was like someone had put an idea in my mind and it was too late too get rid of it. I had to go for it, somehow. So I slowly began to ask a few people on IRC what they thought about me becoming nolraitru. I operated quite cautiously. I could have written a huge mailing list announcement like "I am offering to take over. Say yes, if you want Lojban to be complete!", but I wasn't exactly convinced anybody there would say yes. Even after all this time, I felt people still didn't really give me any credit. Thus, I limited my aspirations to the IRC channel first. tsani, who was basically among the aforementioned group of tinkerers, said he wouldn't mind my being nolraitru, despite our differences. I'm not sure who else expressed approval, but overall, it wasn't much. More importantly, the people whose opinions weighed the most clearly stated that they "don't want Lojban to change", and Robin himself let me know quite clearly that he would not let me take over, since I am "too much of a tinkerer". So there I had it: proof that all the effort and love I had thus far put into Lojban got me no more than anyone else had got. I was just another random tinkerer. Out to destroy the language.
Let me stress again how much Lojban meant to me all this time. It meant everything to me.
For many, Lojban is just a hobby on the side. But for me, Lojban for a long time had been the number one priority in my life. And that's just crazy. And then, to get so little in return; it kind of makes you wonder if it's all worth it. Heck, not only get so little in return, but to also have other people think that I would willfully destroy this language I love so much if I were given the chance; that was just a very painful experience. And it was the reason I eventually got so bitter and sad; the fact that the help I was willing to offer was not the kind of help people were willing to accept from me. It really hurt.
Looking back, I can now simply say that they missed their chance. I'm not exaggerating when I claim that I could have finished the whole damn documentation of the language within only a few months. But well, they apparently thought I was just going to change the language willy-nilly according to my own wishes only. They were wrong. I would have been a moderator, first and foremost. I would have steered the long overdue discussions and I would have made sure to see them through to completion, culminating in a complete description of the language that incorporates all the many things we as a community have learned over the years. A language that we could have been proud to show to newcomers. They missed their chance. Now I'll just wait patiently.
What happened next?
To tell you the truth, leaving the channel was hard. I'd been on it 24/7 for years. It was like cutting off an arm. But I had to take a break. I was starting to give off negative vibes without realizing it. My sadness was radiating and right then I realized that I could no longer allow this. I quit the channel.
The first few days after that, I still could not stop thinking about Lojban. It was crazy. In fact, it seemed as though I was thinking about Lojban even more intensively for those few days. Cutting out IRC had somehow lifted a weight from my shoulders and mind, and my Lojban thoughts started to flow freely.
Of course, this wasn't the point of the break. What I needed was some emotional distance. I had gotten too deep into the rabbit hole the months before. I needed a change of surroundings. I needed emotional clarity. A fresh start — perhaps. A new perspective — certainly.
I managed to finally finish The Wizard of Oz a few days before christmas. When I showed my father the text, he was quite impressed. He then went on to ask a question whose core has been bugging me ever since: "Wouldn't it be nice if you could use your ability on something that more people could read?".
If you recall, I said above that I had begun to wonder if it was all worth it. Putting in so much and getting so little, isn't there something else I should be doing instead? Something that will help me make money maybe (or at least something where I'll be trusted)?
I'm still wondering about this. Sure, I can do it just because. A hobby doesn't have to pay your rent. But when that hobby takes on such monstrous proportions, I think you'd better think about it at least a little bit. When I said earlier that Lojban was the number one priority in my life, I meant it. I had my family go on vacation without me just so that I could work on Lojban. Spending so much time on something means that other things will fall short. If I at least got something for it, I wouldn't have to question it so much. I have always wanted to have a Lojban newspaper, for example. But damnit, it's a lot of work to publish one even just monthly. I am no longer convinced it would be the right thing to do to keep putting Lojban ahead of everything else like that. I can't have a job and still do Lojban 24/7. I have to make some choices, and I'm very uncertain right now. I think I have found the desired emotional distance, but there is still a way to go to find emotional clarity considering this.
But whatever my decision will be, I think this post should give you some idea of what's been going on with me recently and I hope you can better understand me now. As I'm trying to make this a fresh start, feel free to forget everything you think you knew about me and then get to know me anew. I'm in a different place now than I was.
(You may notice that I've stripped the blog down to just Lojban and Toaq Dzu. My Lojban writings can be found on www.selpahi.de, so there is no need to host them here as well.)
Please leave a comment below.
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