Years and years ago, I used to write occasionally for a video game website. (Long enough ago that I wrote a piece drawing conclusions about Final Fantasy X based on early character designs. Ancient history, basically.) One of the editors of the site was a good friend of a good friend, and we ended up in one of those late night hotel conversations you only have at conventions.
He confessed to me that he was really torn. Usually he joined any internet social group for only a year before he pulled up stakes, cut all ties and moves on. He'd been in the IRC chat for this site longer than that, though. He really cared about a few people, including my friend. He'd thought it was going to stick this time.
Now, though, he felt torn between these people he cared about and the need to disappear and start over again. I told him to leave if he needed to but try staying in contact with the handful he cared about. Email could do that. There were other chat rooms.
He disappeared anyway, a few months later. For a guy I never knew well myself, I think about him pretty regularly. I don't disappear completely, I'm not cut out for that, but I think of him when the curtains come down around me and I feel isolated. Most of the time it happens pretty quickly - I join a site, I like it for a little while, then I feel awkward and isolated and just stop clicking through. Right now I feel more isolated than even that, hanging around chats with no idea how to say anything when I'm online, which isn't all that much.
I suppose it's not surprising when I'm up on a mountain, that I wouldn't feel much like talking, huh? While astral work for me doesn't require that I pathwalk with intention the entire time, there's often a great deal of overlap whether I like it or not. Right now I feel that isolation bleeding through.
One of the reasons I don't talk much about my astral work is because it's not particularly exciting. It doesn't make good television, as the story goes. I'd never make the cut for an astral reality show. And I'm okay with that, but sometimes it leaves me with little to talk about, and sometimes people want to see that kind of thing. So I'm trying, I guess, to keep reaching out. We'll see what happens.