The gaming word I hate to use... (weird rant warning)

I guess in every hobby or even or in organization there are key or tag words  that are synonymous with the people involved.  For me the gaming word I despise is campaign.

What is a campaign?

How do you set-up a campaign?

I cringe when I hear (or read on a blog) oh, I am setting up a campaign for next week, you want to join us for the night?

Arrrghhh!!!!! NO! NO! NO! Come here, I have a log I want to beat you with, and it was never involved in any campaign, I just killed pretend things with it.

You set-up a game world.
You devise missions or quests or adventures.
You run sessions, game sessions.

None of those things are a campaign. A campaign is Hannibal crossing the Alps to get to Rome. The efforts of eliminating TB. Defeating the Nazi's in World War 2. LoTR wasn't even a campaign, epic yes, but they were all over the place, it was a quest at the start, then a mission, then a battle.  A campaign in gaming terms, would be to look back over a (minimum of a) year of missions, all related to a particular task and see the steps to complete. It is and grand and majestic and glorious and memorable.

I swear to you, it means something for me, so when you cavalierly use it, it feels like arrows have pierced into my flesh. I think about the so called games that didn't happen again because of real life priorities, or people moved away, for all the out-of-game fights during sessions because of rules arguments, NEVER even say the word alignment, for all the promises of sessions that fell apart and there was so much disappointment of wanting to capture a style or feeling of a game ambiance or lack of a rulebook or supplement. These things have hurt me, too much, too many times.

Don't say that word, it breaks my heart, as games always fall short one more time of everything that I thought it could be.

I play pretend games, individual sessions that sometimes come together like a string of pearls, covered in sea-swine, fake blood, and man-tears but with moments of fun-awesomeness.  I've promised myself, one last time...its just a game, don't let it bother me ever again. enjoy the moment, enjoy the friends, enjoy the minis and the strategy. But when I hear that word...grrr..