Wow.
I can't believe that I've officially been an admin for a little over a week now. It's still too new. My admin badge is still shiny. There isn't a speck of lint on my Chatzy Admin hat. (Flour, yes, because I'm a baker and I have very little that has not gotten stray bench flour on it at some point.)
This isn't something that I expected to happen when I first began writing at RMI three years ago. I blame Marina for getting me into this. Marina is my sister's best friend and a good friend in her own right. So it was pretty hard to turn down her invitation to join the site, which took place in the hallway of our high school after lunch one day and went something like this:
Marina: Hey, y'know that website [Sister] and I write for? We need students in the artistic house. Wanna write someone who plays the cello, since you actually do?”
Me (unsuspecting): Okay, sure.
Little did I know what I was getting into... (Cue creepy organ music.)
In all honesty, though, if I had known in advance what writing at RMI is like, I would have still said yes. Why? Despite the hours of lost sleep from staying up reading up reading, writing, and brainstorming, and the headaches and frustrations from writer's block and characters that won't shut up even when they know you can't post them (Yeah, I'm looking at you, Celia Hier.), I have made friends with some fantastic people, both OOC and IC; gotten to go to a school like Hogwarts wtihout needing a passport, student visa, Gringotts account, or having to leave the comfort of the spinny chair in front of the computer; and learned a lot about writing, characterization, myself, and life in general. Not to mention that I now have enough alter egos that becoming a spy or someone in the Witness Protection Program won't be a problem. Worth it? Without a doubt.
I didn't know any of that then, but I agreed to anyway, and after some thought, I came up with Celia Hier. My original formula for her was something like this:
Celia = [plays cello] + [looks like friend instead of me for added separation of author and character] + [has the same sense of humor that I do] + [has a name that looks like the word “cello”]
A few days later, I was persuaded to to write the Librarian, on the grounds that someone needed to do it and that position didn't require a lot of posting, so a new author could handle it. And thus began my career at RMI. I've added a few more characters since then, and now this term, I'm writing a new staff member that has actual responsibilities: Kristina de los Santos, RMI's new medic.
And then, because Austin thinks I'm qualified, he asked me to join the Admin team. I didn't exactly leap at the opportunity, despite how much I love the site and the community. It was because I love the site and the community that I didn't leap at it right away. I wanted to make sure that it would be something that I wouldn't end up neglecting. Because if I took on a Responsibility that I couldn't manage along with school and work, I would be letting everyone at the site down. (Austin asked me right after I pulled a 55-hour work week.) And I don't want to do that to RMI.
So now I am RMI's odd-job woman, graphics designer for the site upgrade, and Profile Queen. My to-do list, depending on how specific I make it, has either tripled or increased at least fifty-fold.
I don't have a problem with that. I get to make pretty things, which I haven't gotten to do in quite some time, for the new boards, and I actually find doing profiles soothing, despite what Austin thinks. Although they usually don't involve a lot of brainpower, courtesy of all the authors who are awesome enough to do things like editing and checking spelling before submitting, they are time-consuming. (I should be charging Austin for doing them :P.) They are the same thing over and over with minor changes, but I work at a bakery. I'm used to that sort of work. Plus, coding makes me feel like such a computer pro when I know nothing beyond the most basic HTML tags and how to use most already-created software.
Profiles also have the advantage of being unintentionally amusing or ironic. The template I have is based off one character's profile, complete with all of the information intact so that I know where to put things. This character is a second-year Pureblood girl. So while I'm copying and pasting things in and formatting, I end up with things like all the rough-and-tumble Aquila boys disliking being dirty; rebellious Yevetya Alkaeva's greatest ambition to please her family; and any number of awkward or downright inappropriate betrothals, like Cash Taylor being betrothed to Kat Eagle for the amount of time it took me to type that she was his “Greatest Annoyance.” My favorite was definitely the five-second betrothal between Andersson Leppit and Milo Sarkes. I'd like to take this opportunity to wish them much happiness in their life together.
Ciao,
Julia
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