My Dearest OOA

[Iris HalliwellParticipant]

You wrote me today to tell me you think I have pulled a disappearing act on you. My apologies. I do have a tendency to be a bit invisible at times. I’m not the best at being the loud voice of the group. But just because I’ve been the wallflower at the Tension ball, doesn’t mean I haven’t seen all the events transpiring around me, and all the players as well. I’ve been here since these forums began to grow, so I’ve watched as @puppetgirl kindly welcomed all new aspirants to Tension, @thegilded guided them through the puzzles and forums, and @mike inspired them to new levels within the organization. I’ve looked on as @nking and @thebuz theorized, @sovereignskies challenged ideas, and @daela seemed to see what others did not. @amieexists provided support to everyone, @mkarrett was a definitive voice of reason, and @monkeymuffin333 always managed to make me laugh. @atticus360 gave us art to appreciate, and @111error provided us with a really ridiculous drinking game that didn’t last but sure was amusing at times. And the story moved along as we learned more and more about the OOA through the in-person events (which I have never had the privilege of attending but thanks to all of the incredible people who write on these forums I feel like I have the basics down)and the discoveries of @rizzzoooooo, @kasch, and @mkarrett, our latest seeker of clues. Really what I want you to know OOA is that although I don’t talk on here an awful lot, I am definitely *PRESENT*, that although these people don’t know me, I very much know of them (And I’m super duper sorry if that’s creepy guys. I am not creepy. I promise. Ish.), and that whatever it takes for me to prove to you that I want to be a part of this, I am all in. Show me the way.
To my fellow Tension members, thank you for all that you do.
P.S. For all of those I did not mention, I am terribly sorry but retrieving the tags of each and every person is quite frankly kind of a b*tch. You are no less awesome and I will probably highlight all of your awesomeness in later posts.
Okay. Now I’m done. Glory be!
-Sincerely,
The Wallflower

[MikeParticipant]

Someone’s been taking notes 😉 Awesome post!

[Iris HalliwellParticipant]

Thank you @mike! You’ve been so fascinating to read throughout this journey. I really hope I get to hear you speak one day, I’m told it’s quite legendary.

[MikeParticipant]

Wow, thank you so much! I feel that those reports are hugely exaggerated, but I’ll take it!

[111_errorParticipant]

I’m really glad you’ve been pulled back in.

I’m not so glad I am remembered mainly for a caps-lock drinking-penalty thread, but I’ll take it.

[Neil KingParticipant]

Awesome. The best kind of lurker. One who takes notice and pays attention.

[Iris HalliwellParticipant]

What other purpose would there be to lurk @nking? 😛

[Kimberly @ElectricHippoParticipant]

@irishalliwell120 Nicely done. Not even creeped out even a little bit by the amazing mental note taking skills.

[Iris HalliwellParticipant]

Thank you kindly @electrichippo. Very glad to see we once again share a side. I really hope you stick around, you seem like someone I’d like to meet.

[Kimberly @ElectricHippoParticipant]

@irishalliwell120 I’m not on the side of OOA. My reintroduction to the forum is one of ummm, calling in a favor? That might be a good way to put it. Regardless, I’m on the side of anyone who needs assistance or feels confused. I’m also on the side of friendship, regardless of allegiance. I hope we do get to meet one day!

[Iris HalliwellParticipant]

@electrichippo -Noted and good to know. I agree, friendship above all. I think if you ever get to me know you will find I hold loyalty to my loved ones as my most prominent personality attribute. Thank you for the friendly nod regardless of side

• This reply was modified 8 years, 5 months ago by  Iris Halliwell.

[Iris HalliwellParticipant]

Honestly @111error there was a point where I was reading through it and eating my lunch in public, and I was laughing so hard that I was crying, and you know that point where you’re laughing so hard that you’re no longer making any noise, you’re just silently shaking up and down? So I’m sitting there, staring at my phone, tears coming down my face, shaking convulsively. I’m pretty sure people thought I was having a seizure. It was great.
But mostly I remember you as the first person who wasn’t a fake account that messaged me on Tension though Thanks for that.

[111_errorParticipant]

XD – Glad our nonsense entertained, and sorry for making you look ill in public. Like I said, I’m very glad you’ve been pulled back in – and your memory is scary. You and Daela could start a detective agency.

[Michael RizzoParticipant]

This is probably one of my favorite posts on the forum, this was really awesome @irishalliwell120 !

[Iris HalliwellParticipant]

Made my day @rizzzoooooo 😀

[Michael RizzoParticipant]

❤️❤️❤️

[Sean (@TheGilded)Moderator]

I sincerely hope that we see you more around here. We could certainly use someone of your skills

[Iris HalliwellParticipant]

I have a near photographic memory. Put me in a room of OOA memorabilia for five minutes and watch me work hehehe 😉

[DaelaParticipant]

*raises hand*

Petition for Iris to be invited to the next event!

[Susie JParticipant]

✋🏻✋🏻✋🏻

[Iris HalliwellParticipant]

You guys are the best 😀 😀 Can’t thank you enough!!!

[111_errorParticipant]

What Daela said.

[PuppetGirlParticipant]

✋🏻 hand raised

[CodyParticipant]

Hey @irishalliwell120! Awesome post! I am glad you have stopped lurking and rejoined us!
One of your posts was the inspiration for me to step forward into the forums.
I thank you for that.
It was a cryptic reply. I was talking about sacred geometry and the dark ages and secret societies etc.
Hahaha.

[Iris HalliwellParticipant]

Glad my few and far between posts could help be inspiration for someone as active as you!

[TheBuzParticipant]

Thanks for the shout out! I look forward to seeing you participate more!

[Jake OParticipant]

woot! Welcome back and just in time too. Things seem to be reaching a boil around here!

[Iris HalliwellParticipant]

@endlesspictures Yes I can see that. Not so sure that’s a good thing. Seems TENSIONs are running quite high. Everyone needs to take a breath. We’re not going to get anywhere by turning on each other.

[PuppetGirlParticipant]

Wonderful post. ☺️

[Mustafa SaidParticipant]

Hello there @irishalliwell120. Glad to meet you. I certainly agree that I hope to see you around more here if you are able to do so.

[Andrew KaschParticipant]

Thank you for stepping out of the dark! Happy to meet you, @irishalliwell120.

[Iris HalliwellParticipant]

I ran home to catch up/post in Tension today like a little girl running home to check the mailbox (You guys remember when we used to get MAIL? Good times). Thank you so much for your responses @puppetgirl and @kasch. And your compliment made my whole day @mumumusings 😀 I see we have new members and a ton of new posts since last night so I will be here reading for a while. I also think I will join @electrichippo ‘s quest in poking the sleeping III bear. Though I may not have the protection she apparently does, and I don’t necessarily expect him to be IV, he needs to be more communicative than this for heaven’s sake. I’ve seen turtles that were more expressive than this man.

[Kimberly @ElectricHippoParticipant]

@irishalliwell120 Brave girl. I like that! If 3 tries to eat you, scream out and i’ll come help pry open his jaws.

[CodyParticipant]

Yes! I say the community needs to join voices and poke as one.

[MichelleParticipant]

Iris…

I believe we may have received similar messages. Yesterday, I got an email asking if I disappeared. Besides being locked out of my account for a bit (I believe it was a glitch), life sort of got in the way these past few days. I also lurk a lot. I read and try to see I have anything to offer but damn those puzzles sometimes!!! For a girl with a college degree, I often feel out of my league here. You’ve hit the hammer on the nail with your observations. Bravo! Hopefully our paths will cross one day at a future event.

[PuppetGirlParticipant]

@Michelle your post really hit home to me. I understand how you feel. I’m a college grad and an escape room junkie (I’ve been locked in over 150 rooms where you solve puzzles to escape for fun) and I agree that I often don’t see the “puzzles”. Sometimes I think it’s because the pieces are too scattered across the forum & social media for me to keep track of and other times I’m just not sure there are any. Then if I do think I see something, I’ll excitedly go to the forum only to find I was too slow and the conversation has already happened and I feel I have nothing more to add. I’d like to mention that I literally check the forum and social media ALL day since I’m usually just at home all day. I can’t imagine how difficult it must be if you can only catch up after work. I was away for a couple of weekends and coming back to the forum after each was so overwhelming that I almost quit. I felt like I was so behind and had missed so much I’d never catch up. But I did and here I am. I’m glad you are here too. I wish @Iris would start a regular “summary post” to help keep everyone up to date.

[Sean (@TheGilded)Moderator]

A summary post would be an excellent idea. If someone wanted to do such a thing, @mkarrett and I can work out a way to keep it stickied and updated/regularly replaced.

However, in order for this to show up as an alert for them you’ll need to tag them with their user names instead of their “friendly” names. You can find them by clicking their names, and the names @irishalliwell120 and @halfbloodfangirl are found at the top of their profile, under their picture

[MichelleParticipant]

@puppetgirl

Thank goodness I’m not the only one. I just often feel as though I miss things and am struggling to find all the breadcrumbs and pieces. What you’ve said has really struck a cord with me in return. Sometimes, by the time I’ve entered a conversation, I feel as though it’s gone dead. What can I add now that hasn’t been said. I’m home most of the day for now too. I can’t imagine staying caught up while only being able to check on periodically.

[Iris HalliwellParticipant]

Hey @halfbloodfangirl,
I’m sorry it took me so long to get back to you. I just finished working a thirteen hour day, so ridiculous. Holy guacamole I WISH I had more free time to keep up with this stuff, or had the type of job where I could look at the forums (other than e-mail notifications) during business hours because man oh man the things I would accomplish. I TOTALLY understand what you mean. During the past few months, there were plenty of times where I nearly threw up my hands and said “I’m done” to the whole thing because it seemed so overwhelming trying to balance it with everything else. But thanks to some encouragement from two very wonderful men on this site, I stuck it out and put myself out there. And I really have to say that I am so glad that I did. I won’t go into detail on here about what I have been through in my life, but I will say that I would be blown away if Tension could ever do anything to truly psychologically fuck me up that I haven’t already done to myself with twice the cruelty. I definitely have my share of demons; as humans don’t we all? Learning how to be okay with being myself around others has been incredibly challenging, and Tension is helping me do that. Honestly everyone on here is teaching me how to do that. I have always known who I am and what I want, this has never been my issue. But I have not known how to be myself with others, I have not known that kind of trust for a very very long time. Maybe that is what I’m supposed to learn here; maybe on some level that’s what enlightenment is for me right now. So at the end of the day, even when there seems like a lot to catch up on, or there is drama in the forums, I believe the rewards outweigh the costs.
My apologies, I just went off on a super unnecessarily deep tangent there. You see what exhaustion mixed with too much caffeine does to you folks? They should put warning labels on the God damn Red Bull.
Anyway, @puppetgirl I would LOVE to do a summary post. I am a freak with memory and details, and if I was nominated to do so, I would absolutely volunteer my time and efforts to make everyone feel like they could continue on their journey.

[MichelleParticipant]

@irishalliwell120 So much of what you’ve said resonates with me, especially what you’ve said about learning to be okay with yourself around others. This has been something I’ve been struggling with as well. Thank you for sharing that with me even if it was a it Redbull induced. 😉 I believe part of our _path is learning from one another, already Tension has given me so much. Sending you hugs. x

[MelissaModerator]

@thegilded I wonder if the powers that be would be okay with adding new section called “Weekly Updates” and every week we can do a topic that basically summarizes what happened and people can chime in with additional things we missed?

[Sean (@TheGilded)Moderator]

@mkarrett – possibly, but we may be able to accomplish the same thing with a weekly sticky post in Misc or New Aspirants forums. Forum restructuring is a bigger endeavor and may not be needed.

[Anonymous]

I’d be willing to create a weekly summary post.
The only thing I’d ask is that if people have specific things happen to them – phone calls or whatever – that they PM me with it even if they know I know, just to make sure.
Thoughts?

[CrelegantParticipant]

As a newbie who feels like she’s in a bit over her head with wading through months of forum activity, I would really appreciate a weekly update board!

[MelissaModerator]

@crelegant, @thegilded and I are hatching a plan right now. Will keep you updated.

[CrelegantParticipant]

Awesome! And as you and @thegilded and a few others seem to be leader figures amongst the participants, if there’s anything you specifically want me to do, let me know!

[CrelegantParticipant]

@coryphelia I haven’t really had anything happen to me yet, but if and when something does, if you’re still up for making a weekly summary post I’ll definitely let you know what I experienced.

[AmieParticipant]

@irishalliwell120 I am sooo very late but I’ve been a little absent of the forums recently. (trying to remedy that) Thank you for your lovely post and kind words! It’s good to have you back around, as well as others that have made their way back!

[Author]

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