I Miss Rolling with a Crew

I miss rolling with a crew. It can be either for something formal, like the colleagues that we can banter with at work as short respites from the daily grind, or a group of folks who share the same interest hanging out and doing something together.

What I miss is the crew that bands together and strives to create/produce something. Part of the reason why I stepped away from Aikido (apart from the physical aspects of having to do more and more advanced breakfalls to advance) was that while we were all practising together, it was still a personal affair. This is unlike say playing in the TGCO, Kiltie Band, or even Flute Choir---in all those cases, we each had a role to play, and together we create something that not a single person could have done alone, no matter how powerful.

I suppose that is why after being in a care group for nearly a year, and being associated with a church for roughly the same, I find myself feeling the same types of feelings that I had when I was doing Aikido. We were together sharing fellowship and camaraderie, but ultimately the spiritual path is still one that can only be walked by oneself---there is just nothing that can be achieved as a group. That sort of bums me out, I suppose.

For someone who used to declare himself as a misanthrope, he sure as hell isn't too happy when he gets his apparent wishes.

The global handling of the COVID-19 is a shitshow that has fucked up the development, maintenance, and advancement of inter-personal relationships. At times, it feels like the nonsense that came after 9/11 all over again---anxiety and paranoia is at an all-time high, everyone is seeking for certainties amidst developing situations where it becomes all too easy to mis-estimate the associated risk/exposure, and where rational discussions go to die. The only difference between the two is that COVID-19 is a more invisible enemy than the nebulous term of ``terrorists''---it is hard to apply the social control mechanism of ``othering'' to galvanise the population when it is not some other social group that can be targeted. In the early days of the pandemic, the US President of the time had tried doing that by calling it by a term that the WHO eventually frowned upon as being unproductive from the perspective of communications and coordination of control measures at a global scale.

Anyway, I'm not interested in talking about the big world for the moment; I just want to talk about the much smaller world that I inhabit: missing my crew.

I managed to figure out what I was feeling after watching the 1 Year Anniversary live stream for HoloMyth, the first group of livestreamers from the then newly formed Hololive EN branch. I probably mentioned before how I enjoyed their videos because they were like an artist group, where the ``art'' in question is video content creation in the form of live-streaming. That anniversary video shows that plainly, as well as the all-important bonds that they had forged from rolling as a crew for one whole year.

Yeah, I miss that camaraderie. Maybe that's why I'm still a little bummed out that we haven't started rehearsals for TGCO yet, no thanks to the still-raging pandemic.

I think that as a person, I am very selective in terms of whom I call my crew. It's not about being elitist---I think that calling someone a part of one's crew is more than just casual meet-and-greet levels of acquaintance. There's something innately complementary for the members in the crew so that while individually possibly weak, as a crew, we are strong. Perhaps that is why I have usually walked alone, with at most a couple of close friends for that particular era, until their life path and ``aetheric resonance'' starts diverging. At that point, I'll just quietly let it die away and talk about it no more.

And that's why when someone I call part of my crew suddenly turns around and stabs me, it hurts much more than the initial damage from that action alone.