What have you built today?

[Vekseid]

I started this before NightBird passed on. I'm not sure what hurts more, never seeing her words again, or never seeing her reaction to mine. Knowing - however subtly - that in judging ourselves we are always flawed, we seek confirmation in others. NightBird was always willing to offer that, to great detail.

Watching her build World Enough and Time was an exhilarating experience. She had done so much for her life already, and still she was creating. Forging.

We are remembered by the things we have built. Friendships made, discoveries found, achievements reached, and actual structures - online or off - that people are forced to take at least some mental note of when encountered. I have lent my hand in helping Trieste continue NightBird's site, so that it too, like so much else NightBird created, can be remembered.

I can do little except promise to remember - my own wake is over, and I move on, but I leave room for a bird in my heart that comes in the night with a sweet siren song. I can only speak for myself, here... Not everyone knew her. And it would be shallow of me to discount the memories of anyone whose loved ones have passed on.

I just could not take the notice down without saying something.

Someone asked of me, shortly after NightBird's notice went up, wondering what the 'bar' was for being put up there, and why someone else who 'passed on' was not. Aside from the morbidity of it, and that some of the staff have actually read Judith's obituary, compared to the people who pull this sort of thing as a prank or ruse, I have my own question, for everyone - not just those who would ask such a question.

What have you created today?

What have you made better?

I see people who worry about being forgotten, or being poor. Wealth is not a dollar value - dollars are at best an abstraction. At the worst, they miss the point entirely. Social capital is a very real economic concept, and things you make, repair, and enrich for yourself add to your own personal capabilities, whether it is a chair you have crafted or a new subject you have learned.

We are remembered for these things. We are regarded for them. Everything you create leaves a mark, everything you repair leaves a memory, everything you give - be it wealth or knowledge - leaves an impression.

NightBird left impressions in many more places than simply Elliquiy.

What have you built today?

[Aeval]

Veks, thank you for this...

I did not know NightBird but I know she touched many, many lives and at the end of the day, how wonderful to leave this world having touched someone with your words, thoughts, deeds, caresses...

I work with children whose parents do more to disrupt and destroy these children's' lives than to build and repair. But even in their dark world, they can be asked:

"What have you created today? What have you made better?".

And I would add one more thing to what you have said Veks,...don't wait to tell a person they are doing a great job, or that you appreciate them. Don't wait to share with those you love and care for those words of endearment- Life is just too damn short to wait.

[Chevalier des Poissons]

Sorry, but I will disagree on that. If I look at my life and ask those questions, then, my life was a waste of time. If I ask instead 'Did you do what you want to do?', then I will have a nice answer. I am not saying that everyone should do only what they want, but we should seek happyness, in a diff aspect. As a musician and a writer, I wrote another chapter of one of my stories, and played some music today, then I was happy.

I know, I see myself in other way than that, but if I have to choose between making some difference or be happy before, I would choose happyness. Not that I am selfish, but I don't want to follow the same path of my uncle, who always did good things and had an empty life until he suicided.

[Greenthorn]

Shambler, it's not even a matter of making anyone else happy.  Building something...anything...is the point.  You must have friends, no?  You must have built a friendship.  Just because you might not have gained anything out of it does not mean the other person hasn't.

Musician and writer...you are building music and stories...so in fact...you have built something (even if no one else sees it)

[Izu]

That is a question that everyone should ask themselves every once in a while... It makes you think about your life, your dreams, your future and past...

What have I built?
A few friendships that have lasted for almost eight years no, and mind you I'm not even twenty-two yet. I have been there for my friends in hard times, when they needed support, someone to shush them and tell them everything will be okay. Thanks to this I've built myself the confidence that I can help people and that I'm worth existing, and I know that if I need, whenever I need help and support or just a friend on whose shoulder I can whine and whine, there will be a few who would always be there for me, even if I try to  push them away.

What have I built in my twenty-one, soon to be twenty-two years on this world? Nothing big, nothing important or at least one wouldn't think so, but to me following my dream is my biggest achievement. For years I wanted to know more about computers, work something connected with computers, design, programming, and now I'm majoring in exactly this, and despite the harsh exams that each semester get quite a few of my fellow college-mates drop out, I'm still there, still fighting, and I'm not only surviving but I'm actually not so far from the top students.

Maybe people like me - who has still not been out in the real life for real, should ask themselves what they want to build in the future. I can right away answer this as everyone dreams about their future lives. I want to be a better Me, better to myself that is. I want to have more confidence in myself. I want to find true love. I want to graduate and fight a good job to support myself. I want to create a family, have it and cherish it despite the fact that I've come out from a broken family and never had a good example of what 'good families' are like. I want to save at least one life, maybe by adopting a child as most orphans here end up on the bottom and never get the chance for a good life. I want to have a bunch of grandchildren and I want to be a cool grandparent like my own grandparents. I want to die peacefully in my sleep and people to remember me for who I have been and what I've done for them and myself.

Will I achieve all those things? I don't know. Ask me in a few decades. But to me what matters more right now is that I've built my dream and I'm trying to follow it. Step by step I will built my life and myself the way I've imagined those, so that one day I'll be proud of my life and I will regret nothing.

Dreaming and trying to follow those dreams is quite the big thing to built as well, because if you look around you will see people who just follow the flow of life, not really caring what happens to them and why it happens to them... So don't look back... At least not until you've still got to live. Your eyes should be at the future and not over your shoulders at the past... Live your life so that one day when you are no longer here the ones that are still here will say 'Damn they had such a good life... I wonder what I've done so far in my life... I should be better and work harder and achieve more...'

Live your life now for your future self, so that your past[/p] will be remembered by the ones to follow.

[Vekseid]

This wasn't, specifically, about making buildings, objects, or websites. As others mentioned, friendships count too. Tear down the bridges you build if you must, but you do so at your own peril.

I built a wooden sword when I was a kid. It was a lot of work, it looked crappy, but it was pretty awesome and I gained a wonderful sense of achievement from it.

Refining Elliquiy's policies and mechanisms are also a sort of continual project for me. It's exhilarating to watch, but I also have to keep other projects in mind as well (this blog is a bit of a self-reminder >_>). I have a lot more to say about how this place is put together still - haven't really even scratched the surface.

This does bring a thought to mind though - a few people decided to burn bridges with me over the past year, to varying degrees... maybe I'll talk a bit about that in a new blog entry >_>

Seriously though, there's not much you can do about your past. Quite a lot you can do about your future, though. And just because economic times are tough does not mean you cannot increase your wealth.

[Chris Brady]

I saw this on Gaia Online in someone's posting structure:

"Don't count the days, make the days count."

And my MSN tag under my name, I have something that I put down a while back and I can't seem to want to change it:

"Existence is futile, but truly living is divine."

I think that both sayings actually work along with what you're saying Vek.  Build something, make something COUNT and you and everyone around you may be better for it.

[Cherri Tart]

i made breakfast for my g/f which made us both very happy, and i am now in the middle of baking, which hopefully will make other people happy and i wrote a few notes which made people smile, including myself.  sometimes that's what it is all about.

[TheHatintheCat]

I didn't build anything, per say, but I managed to refind my calm center after a rocky start of putting two little children to bed and then convince them that if they closed their eyes and lay real quite they could hear faeries sing.

[AmberStarfire]

I just found this thread, linked from the Employment Advice sub-forum. I'm on Elliquiy because Hairy invited me, after Nightbird invited him, so she is the reason we're a part of the site. I remember when Hairy first joined and started writing stories. I was angry because I disapproved, without even knowing Nightbird or what the site was truly about. He calmed my concerns and explained it to me, and in time I joined and years later became an active member as I am now. I feel sorry now that I was ever angry at her, though I'm fairly sure she never knew. She gave me an amazing gift (in fact, many gifts) as a result of her decision to invite Hairy. Replying about Nightbird wasn't my reason for coming here, but after reading the first post, I wanted to put my thoughts down on here. I wonder sometimes how we might've got along, though I wasn't 'there yet' in terms of understanding at the time Hairy first came here to the site. Her actions had a role in shaping the direction my life has taken.

In terms of building things, that is what I am/what I do. Everything I do is about building something, whether it's dinner, or jewellery, or a story, or a book, or a piece of artwork, or something else. I am constantly working on building something, every day, a little piece at a time. So I can identify with this. At the moment I'm editing another book of poetry, though I don't expect it to do well, and I'm thinking of starting a painting for Rhedyn's art challenge.