Hello all! Thank you for all the well wishes...I wanted to reply to them individually, but honestly I'm not sure what I've got to say aside from thank you. My hope was always that I was doing a good job, but I'm tough on myself when I really care about something, so I never really felt like I was doing enough. I'm glad I had the chance to be on the team, and thank you all for following me along the way, and catching me when I was wrong and supporting me when I wasn't. It all means the world to me.
If you had told me three and a half years ago when I signed up for this site what was going to happen in the time spent around here, I wouldn't have believed a word of it. I was a roleplayer, and I was looking for art to use as reference for my OCs. They were still OCs at the time, too, not characters. Collecting art on here was as good of a distraction from college as roleplaying was, and I would stay up until nearly sunrise many mornings just finding things I liked and collecting them, some for the roleplaying, some because they were cool, and some because I looked at them and felt a spark in my brain.
When I joined dA, it was a distraction. It was something to pass the time, something to get my mind off my work, something to fuel my sleep-deprived state on a bit longer than it would've been otherwise. That's what dA was when I started. It was something to do at 3:30 in the morning, when all of my friends had long-since gone to sleep. But I posted a few things within the first month of being here, an old story excerpt and a few drawings of which at the time I had been very proud. They were scythes, which in retrospect is very fitting, as the image of the scythe is something that's stuck with me for a long time. But anyway, that's not really relevant here. After the first month of being here, I started to get a few comments here and there on what I posted, and it felt nice to get comments, so I kept posting things. I distinctly remember posting some silly haiku and limericks to get a laugh out of people.
At some point or another I found my way to the community, I don't remember how specifically I did so, but there was a point (and it might literally have been overnight) where I went from zero knowledge of this place to having a general idea what the community was. My first memory of the literature community was
Writers-Workshop, and
GeneratingHype's
dialogue workshop. I didn't take part, and I don't recall why. But shortly after that I remember finding
Amberlouie's
What's Past is Present mini-competition, and that one I did take part in.
I remember feeling confident, thinking that people had been commenting on my work and liking it, and assuming that that would reflect on the contest, as well. I didn't really further my involvement in the community all that much in the month between the contest starting and Amber releasing her results. I watched the workshop and quietly made up excuses for not taking part: poetry wasn't my thing and I wasn't any good at it, lipograms were too difficult for me, I wasn't a writer anyway, workshopping on characters' names was beneath me, etc. When Amber released her results and my obviously superior poem didn't win, I was more than a little bit taken aback. This might sound silly, I don't know. Yes, I was that stuck up at the time. Yes, it was a blow to my ego to not win that contest. Yes, I made the smart choice for once in my life.
Instead of whining, I stepped up and tried to figure out what I was doing wrong and what other people were doing right. Though I was terrified to do it, I took part in
EveningDownpour's
nonfiction poetry workshop, and unsurprisingly had my butt handed to me on a plate, but I rolled with it and figured I'd give the next workshop a try, too. It went quite a bit better for me (while it may be hard to believe, at one point I did write solely prose), and I was pleased with the outcome, as were quite a few of the workshoppers. Somewhere in the midst of all that, I found my way into chat, and I started taking part in dAmnLit, but I was a lurker for a lot of the time, still testing the water for the most part. When getLIT was launched, it made sense to me to lurk in there too, so I did, and I gradually worked into the community from there.
From that point my involvement in the community is pretty easy to trace, starting with
DailyDeviants, then moving to
Writers-Workshop and
Adopt-A-Writer, getting ticked in September 2008, then to
seniormentors,
Trashrock and
devCRIT, and then I stepped back for a while toward the back end of 2009. When I stepped back for a bit, it was because I was getting burnt out, and while I hated that I was doing it at the time, it did make coming back a lot easier. I was able to balance more, and I felt more involved with the community again. It was a nice feeling.
And then the hat happened. It was one of the stealthiest things I've ever been a part of, to this day. Friday afternoon I emailed
moonbeam13 about the deviantART Related opening, and three minutes later she had replied to my email (who replies to an email that quickly, I mean
really...), within an hour and a half everything was squared away, and the next morning I was ^
GaioumonBatou. I am still amused by the fact that
Thiefoworld was faux mad that I got my hat so quickly when he had to wait two weeks before his symbol flipped.
The past year has been an absolute blast for me, in terms of dA things. From featuring DDs to trivia in chat to working on news articles to being able to launch big projects and contests, I had a wonderful year around here. At home, not so much, with dad being out of work for nearly eight months and various other things, but dA helped establish some stability in an otherwise very unstable year, and for that I have all of you to thank.
Even more so recently, seeing comments about not wanting me to leave the team and stuff, I really do appreciate that. I tried my best to do a good job, and I'd like to think that the things I did were fun, and I'd like to think that the works I featured were decent at worst, amazing at best. But all in all, it really doesn't matter what I did or didn't do. The reason this community is what it is is because it's a community, not just one big group of people who fail to communicate. One person can't make things successful in a place like this. Anything I did that worked was because other people stood up and took part.
CR Updates:
dA Related CR Update - January 2010 dA Related CR Update - February 2010 dA Related CR Update - March 2010 dA Related CR Update - April 2010 Literature CR Update - May 2010 Literature CR Update - June 2010 Literature CR Update - July 2010 Literature CR Update - August 2010 Literature CR Update - September 2010 Literature CR Update - October 2010 Literature CR Update - November 2010 Literature CR Update - December 2010Daily Deviations:
dA Related Daily Deviations - January 2010 dA Related Daily Deviations - February 2010 dA Related Daily Deviations - March 2010 dA Related Daily Deviations - April 2010 Literature Daily Deviations - May 2010 Literature Daily Deviations - June 2010 Literature Daily Deviations - July 2010 Literature Daily Deviations - August 2010 Literature Daily Deviations - September 2010 Literature Daily Deviations - October 2010 Literature Daily Deviations - November 2010 Literature Daily Deviations - December 2010Miscellaneous things: Guide to the dA Related Gallery dA's 10th birthday prose contest (and
results)
The Flame and Ash Literature Contest (and
results)
Project Educate: Literature WeekIn the time since I joined dA, there have been 12 lit GMs and 5 dA Related GMs, not including myself.
Lit:
GunShyMartyr,
somestrangebirds,
StJoan,
GeneratingHype,
lovetodeviate,
LadyLincoln,
SparrowSong,
fllnthblnk,
Memnalar,
nycterent,
GwenavhyeurAnastasia, and
Halatia.
dA Related:
maxwell-heza,
DCZed,
TerrorCookie,
2dazed, and
GinkgoWerkstatt.
apocathary had trouble with my username.
Then Kay joined the team.Pablo Neruda is a guaranteed victory in mock arguments with
nycterent.
In three and a half years, I have changed. This is to be expected, of course, but while people change, usernames don't. I've considered moving accounts for a long time, and it's something I've been pretty open about as well. I've brought it up in my journal on numerous occasions, and it's nothing to do with my experiences here. I have enjoyed all of what's gone on around here, I've had an absolute blast, and this decision doesn't reflect on any of that, at all.
Part of the truth is that I've outgrown the username. Part of the truth is that I outgrew the username two and a half years ago. But the majority of the truth is that I feel this is something I need for myself, both as an individual and as a writer. That big old wall of text up at the top of the journal that goes over self-reflection is that part of me letting go. Who I was then is not who I am now. I have direction, focus, and reason now. And while I'm sure the argument is that I can keep that focus while staying at this account, I hope that you can all respect my decision and accept that I am being serious in this regard. After two years of being indecisive, I am doing what I feel is right for myself, and this is what it is.
I won't be deactivating this account. (As I said, I have good memories, and while I do want to move, it'd be like destroying a photo album full of nostalgic things.) I am leaving my journal designs, the one tutorial, and a few silly things here. Everything else is going into storage. I have moved the deviations I want to keep public to the account I will be using from here on out, that being
ikazon. If you follow me to that account, it is greatly appreciated. And if not, I wish you well. Thank you to everyone who has taken this voyage with me, hopefully it continues to take me somewhere good.
Sincerely yours,
the monkey
