If you can keep your voting bloc when those around you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust the STV when all players doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can blog and not be tired by blogging,
Or being mocked a bit, don’t deal in jeers,
Or being trolled, don’t give way to trolling,
And yet don’t drink too much or deal in tears:
If you can PVP—and not make killboards your mojo;
If you can Mine—and not make Covetors your aim;
If you can see both Incarna and Inferno
And treat those two disasters just the same;
If you can remember Revelations
Twisted by Sov holders to make a pile of ISK,
And not give up on Crucible’s iterations,
And cross the Rubicon, just to take the Risk:
If you can make a plan of all your yearnings
And risk it on a CSM campaign,
And still remember the goal at your beginnings:
“To represent the players of the game“
If you can force your shields, hull, and armor
To serve you long after your capacitor is gone,
And not get bitter when changes badly strike you
And see the Skills you trained to V withdrawn:
If you can chat with forum trolls and keep your virtue,
Or Skype with Devs—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor alliance mates can hurt you,
If all blocs count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the meeting minutes
With a hundred pages worth of transcript fun,
Yours is the CSM and all that goes with it,
And—which is more (?)—you can fly to Iceland my son!
–I wrote this before I sponsored the poetry contest and I knew I was taking a risk that one of the participants might use this poem. Sure enough, Mike Azariah did (and did fine job, too). The original is "If" by Rudyard Kipling.
Pilgrim in Exile 