Moving on from Isogen 5, again.

Well I said it, there for I must accept that its real.

I've left Isogen5 three  times now. I'm going to refer to Isogen5 as a her at times in this post because this is exactly like a real life love affair relationship you can't get out of.

Lots of analogies to follow. This post should get super weird, so be prepared. 

 Each time I tell myself it will be the last time, but I find myself evaluating why I'm with her, what she brings to the partnership and what my expectations actually are. 

Isogen 5 to me is the manifestation of all my ideals, goals and achievements wrapped into a corp. Just like that perfect women you think you want, but after you get her, you find it was the chase that you loved more. You wake up and find her sleeping in your bed, you think to yourself, 'been there, done that, whats next' and she snores.

Recent drama has taken hold in the corp, some could say it was inevitable with such strong personalities, conflict was bound to happen. I think we just flew to close to the sun. We were blinded by our own magnificence. We focused too much on kill boards, fits, winning fights and stopped looking at what made the game fun, which was suppose to be each other. Each of us began to fly differently, caring just enough about our spaceships and records that we didn't commit when we could have.

I found myself giving a shit way too much, not accepting fellow pilots for who they were. People I called friends would piss me off for one thing or another. I found myself angry with something they didn't do or did do. I didn't want to be on coms, I didn't want to work it out, I didn't want to do what they were doing.  No logic behind my feelings, just perpetual angry.

I've always had the principal that we should be thankful for the people who fought us, the people who logged into the game, warped out of their towers to face us on the battlefield but had the eventual outcome of their loss. These players should be thanked for what they did. Thanked for their explosions they brought to us. Iso5 stopped saying thank you for your gift of an explosion and began expecting it.

It didn't help that we began recruiting like minded pilots, tag alongs looking for easy kill board bumps. People who brought nothing to the corp other than hate and n+1. I can recall countless conversations with one pilot in particular who I attempted to interact with on a human level, but over and over again this person would stun me with the amount of venom they could spread. That person poisoned the general friendliness of the corp, was so out spoken in nearly every communication outlet anyone with any breath of logic or compassion was extinguished. The definition of a bully, someone you can't get away from and seems to only want to torment others. (Before you ask who that person was, they aren't worth naming, because they were just a single nail in my coffin for leaving iso5)

We as a  corp began evaluating everything, every single misstep in both our opponents and in ourselves. Even when it wasn't warranted at all, it became a matter of process. Constantly trying to be the best, no matter the cost. If we had 5 fights in a night, we had 6 conversations about what we could have done differently to achieve perfection of execution. We analyzed everything, everyone, anything that may or may not have contributed to us winning an engagement in a more spectacular way.

 If one single pilot screwed up, the entire group had to endure 10 minutes of ridicule on what that person could have done differently, even if that mistake didn't result in a ship loss. It began to be so common that I began recording the conversations, but they made me hostile to edit together, so I stopped. 

Doctrine began to be god, creativity and spirit took a back seat. If we encountered a situation were doctrine didn't fit, and expectations of an engagement didn't match perfect outcomes, we drop kicked the fight by blobbing our opponents or simply flying things that didn't commit to engagements, any tactic that would result in us being ISK positive in an engagement. 

I found myself acting the same way as everyone else and hating myself for it. I would lash out at my feelings of 'try hardness' and attempt to just yolo ships into a loss just to prove to myself it was just a fucking game and I should enjoy it. I wanted to prove to myself and my friends that I was above all that. Above risk aversion, critical flying and to just be a noob again. I wanted to make myself an example of 'fuck you, its my stuff, I do what I want and you can't fucking stop me".  In the end I was told to stop, no reason was given, no solution was found.

Eventually I just disliked everyone on coms. To hear their voices brought back memories of them fucking something up or them ridiculing someone else for fucking something up. Being on coms made me hostile, the pilots made me hostile and I don't want to be hostile when I play a game I love. 

I took about a month off, took some me time, played other games. Got a fresh perspective and I've returned. I don't know what I want for the future, but I remember my past,  and I don't want that. 

I've found a place to land, with a group that has some good potential. From what I've been told so far, they have a bright pvp future. I hope my experience in their goals can be an asset for their own rise. There are some challenges to be sure, but no corp or relationship is perfect. I've found perfect in the past, and its lack of imperfections pissed me off.