This marks
my first day on e2 in nearly a year. What's my excuse, you may ask? I have none. At first, I simply felt like I had nothing to contribute. The weeks and months passed, and eventually I stopped using e2 as well as noding. It dropped from my mind.
Now I'm back, hopefully for good, hopefully with a vengeance.
Things seem familiar and yet very intimidating here. The little details are what disturb me. For one: Scratch Pads? Blasphemy! In my day we had one Scratch Pad and we were grateful.
I see the catbox is still alive and well (do the kids these days still say catbox?) I always kept to myself, so anyone reading this may wonder exactly who I am. I certainly recognize the more prolific names of my time; just glancing at the Other Noders list brings back obscured, faded memories. TheDeadGuy, Bitriot, Sim3, eien_meru, ascorbic (ah yes, the catbox archive), BlackPawn. I know I once had some sort of opinion or description assigned to most of these, but now names are all I'm left with. I'm starting all over again.
Now I can't stop the flood of memories, none of them bad. Fundraisers, Secret Santa, horror story contests, noding challenges, nodermeets and their subsequent reports. The C!s, EDB, Butterfinger McFlurry (please still be up!). Yes, coming back was surely the right thing to do.
So I've decided to node again? Yes, and I'd like to be a part of the community as well. It's too early to tell how serious I am about this. I may end up leaving again within the week. I doubt that will happen; I've got some nodes in mind that I want to see to before I head back out into the cruel Internet wilderness. It really is cruel and cold out there, and there is no place like e2.
And now if you'll excuse me, I have a lot of comment-sorting to do, not to mention catching up on the hip new nodes I've missed in the past year.
One last thing. I'm posting this as a public daylog, not because I crave the spotlight and myriad welcome backs, but because I want people to know how meaningful E2 The Community is and was. Around the time I left, there was a lot of discussion about maintaining the tight-knit feel of the site while embracing the inevitable growth of our little information database. I'm posting this publicly so people can see that, even for someone who noded by the sidelines and then left for eleven months, everything2.com is a special place, and it is hard to leave for good.