Your Life since Joining TCoD

[Negrek]

I meant to reply to this thread January 1st, 2015, which would be the one-decade anniversary of my joining TCoD! And then... I forgot.

I meant to reply to this thread January 1st, 2020, which would be the fifteen-year anniversary of my joining TCoD and also the start of a new decade! And then... I was too lazy.

But now, with some fresh new software to celebrate and it still being kind of close to fifteen years and the beginning of a new decade, I figured I would finally go ahead and reply to it, and then we'll see if I can bring myself to do so again in another fifteen years.

Anyhow, I joined TCoD way back on January 1st, 2005. I then proceeded to not post anything for a week or so for some reason--maybe because on January first I would have been stuck with my grandparents' awful dial-up and had to wait until I got home to my family's less awful dial-up before I really settled in. Regardless! Here's the first post I made back on what used to be Invisionfree TCoD. Witness the cringe of ancient teenage posts and also the absolutely godawful things Tapatalk wrought after buying out the forums' old host!

That's how it began. What have I been up to since then? It's been fifteen years, so here are fifteen noteworthy things that have happened to me in the fifteen years since I joined up here:

- I traveled without my family for the first time on a band trip to Europe
- Helped co-found ASB!
- Got my high school diploma
- Took a trip to China! Nothing super noteworthy about it except that it was a lot of fun
- Finished my second chaptered fanfic, Clouded Sky, after eight years of working on it
- Almost immediately started posting another gigantic fanfic because I never learn, I guess
- After multiple failed attempts, actually started to grasp how to program, radically altering the course of my education and career
- Started my own fansite, Thousand Roads
- Got my bachelor's degree
- Moved away from home and became financially independent from my parents
- Was first author on a paper published in a scientific journal, which was more or less a prerequisite for the next item
- Got my PhD
- Took a year-long trip around the world!
- Got my first ~"real"~ job
- Got a cat, my first pet entirely of my own, who is a sweet, gentle fluff angel

Although TCoD's slowed way, way down since 2005, I'm glad that the community's been around for as long as it has--and continues to be around, albeit not always on the forums themselves. I didn't quite grow up here, but I'd like to think I've learned a thing or two and matured somewhat in that time. I was incredibly fortunate to find this community fifteen years ago, and to have met so many wonderful people simply from hanging around here. Many of whom I've now had the privilege of meeting up with offline, and any of whom I'd be happy to see again if we managed to cross paths. I hope that you've all done well, whether life's taken you away from this place or not, and that you'll keep on keeping on out there, wherever you go.

In the geopolitical sense I can't call the last fifteen years all that great (petition to go back to, say, 2005? I feel like 2005 was good vintage), but on a personal level I think I did pretty well. Onwards to the future! I 'll finish off with some goals for the next fifteen years:

- Finish Salvage, ideally THIS year but most definitely before we reach a decade of it being posted
- Publish at least one piece of original fiction in a professional venue
- Save enough to stop working full time

 

[M&F]

(petition to go back to, say, 2005? I feel like 2005 was good vintage)

ah, yes, the w bush era, a good geopolitical time for everyone involved-

anyways, huh, did I not ever post on this thread? strange, considering how self-obssessed I can be. so anyways, hi, I'm MF, I'm studying history in university at the ripe young age of nearly 26 after two other failed courses; maybe I'll make a lengthy timeline of it later if I feel like it

 

[storm]

it has been a while!! what didn't happen since I joined tcod

uh. gender identity stuff? still working that out but that changed a lot since last I was here. I went through therapy, went back to school, figured out a direction. I'm a communications major now and could talk anyone's ear off about theory!! I wrote a lot of fanfic about various games, primarily destiny and swtor

I developed a lot more prominent chronic health stuff unfortunately, so most days I'm juggling that, caretaking and school. some things are better, some are worse - so it goes

 

[Melanie]

Oh wow. There is so, so much that's happened to me since I joined in late 2004. I'll just go over some of the most important and interesting stuff. Prepare for a wild ride:

- In early 2006, I became more active, because Mew's Hangout disappeared. Around that same time I fell into depression for the first time. All sorts of awful things were going on, including having a teacher who took stuff from me and also regularly threw away my lunch to try to get me to do more schoolwork. I didn't tell anyone what was going on, except for in some of the posts I made on TCoD. The posts were awful and didn't go into much detail, but they were the only place where I talked about anything that was happening to me. I still refer back to them nearly every time I do a writing project that talks about early 2006. I continued to have problems with depression and later

Spoiler

self-harm

for years after.

- Skipping to years later, I started having serious problems with paranoid delusions (well, psychosis in general, as I had hallucinations and such as well, but the delusions were by far the worst part) in mid-2011. This eventually led to a diagnosis of schizophrenia in 2013. I can't even come up with the words to describe how terrifying and awful paranoid delusions are; they, along with other symptoms, almost seemed to freeze things in place for years, causing me to be unable to work, take care of myself or live on my own, and resulted in three psychiatric hospitalizations. I'm just now, at 26, getting to the point where I'm mostly (but not entirely) free of paranoid thoughts and fears. I feel like I wasted so much time, but I couldn't get them to go away, and it's taken years of therapy and antipsychotic medication to get to where I am now. Now that I'm getting better, I'm trying to figure out how to one day be able to support myself financially and take care of myself, and I want to try to become more independent.

- While before I had problems with depression, later on I started having more problems with other extreme moods. I had extreme high moods before, but rarely, and they didn't last as long. In late 2018 I had my first big manic episode. Suddenly, I was bursting with energy, quit wanting to sleep, and was basically all hyped up and ridiculously happy. This set the stage for what came in 2019, the earlier parts of which included quite a few manic (and probably mixed) episodes. These episodes caused me to end up in the ER multiple times, but none of them resulted in me being admitted to the hospital.

- In 2019, I discovered my passion and what I want to do in life. I had always loved to write, but in 2019 this reached a whole new level. Writing became my obsession, a stronger interest than anything I have ever had (even Pokémon). During some earlier times in 2019, this managed to combine itself with my manic episodes, which meant that I would do things like barely sleep and write a bunch more pages than usual in a short amount of time (I was having the time of my life and I was on a roll). After my medication was adjusted and the manic episodes stopped, I was a little concerned that this would cause my writing obsession to diminish. It didn't. If anything, it became stronger once the extreme moods were out of the way. After this, I started feeling more confident in myself, and what little paranoia was left was much easier to deal with when I had writing to excite me and distract me from it. In addition, my

Spoiler

self-harm

problem finally ended, partially because writing made me care about myself more. Also, at some point in 2019 I got a new doctor, and she thinks that due to my mood problems I might have schizoaffective disorder rather than schizophrenia.

- In early 2020, I was unable to write much of anything for maybe two months. Then, in late February, my interest returned, and that's where I am now. Hoping to get to the point where I can handle life better on my own. Wanting to finally do something with my life after years of being stuck. My fear of failure makes it hard for me to try, but I know that if I don't try, I'll regret it for the rest of my life.

 

[IndigoClaudia]

I joined like two weeks ago and the CoronaVirus happened, but then again, it already did happen before that.
Cave of Dragonflies honestly has changed my life a bit because now i have lovely friends on the internet who, like me, enjoy pokémon!

(And are massive nerds, like me).

 

[mewtini]

feeling suddenly emboldened to post in here, which is a decision that definitely isn't at all influenced by the fact that i've spent the last day reading my old posts and cringing

i joined in 2011! i was about to turn 10 and i have just turned 19, so i guess i've been here for pretty damn close to half of my lifetime. this forum is oddly enough kind of the only place that makes me feel at all "old," haha. when i joined i was in ... sixth? grade and i'm now at the end of my junior year of college. :T majoring in computer science, largely because of someone i met here, and am still very close/in contact with a couple people i've known for effectively 7+ years now which is crazy!

anyway 10yo me would not have thought i'd still be at all attached to tcodf in the way i still am, but it's weird to realize how much of my life it's influenced in retrospect. nice to see it suddenly come back from the dead

 

[Herbe]

Oh, geez.

I think I joined in late 2014? I was 12 years old, and I know damn well most of my posts reflected that. At my join date, I was like a week away from realizing that I was attracted to girls, what a lovely time. So I marched my way on these forums because Pokemon was one of my only strong-held interests that I had kept for more than a couple of weeks. I did kinda drop off by summer 2015 (I think my laptop broke,) almost came back in 2017 but forums were deader than old fish, and now I'm here and everythings cool and awesome again.

The play by play of my life since 2014 kinda goes like this:
- realising that living w/ my biological mom was bad for my health and wellness
- joining marching band and making some lifelong friends
- finally leaving my mom and going to live with my dad in louisiana (couple states away) at the end of 2017
- depresshun from leaving all my friends
- going to a kickass magnet school that brought me out of depression
- cutting/dying my hair myself and changing my name (to female middle name, but whatever)
- oscillating between am I bi, or a lesbian?
- realising that visual art is fuckin awesome and i actually want to do it as a career
- but also linguistics kicks ass and I want to do that too
- november 2019, finally breaking myself out of my cis denial shell, thought I was nonbinary
- i think by january 2020 I had just accepted being a trans guy, although I was scared as shit
- also got a Questbridge Match Scholarship so I'm going to college with 0 loans, fuck yeah

So, I've got a p bright future! Excited :))

edit: maybe im still 12 because i just noticed this is post #69 :3

 

[Stryke]

I think I've been here long enough that I can put actual stuff here:

Spoiler: oh dang its my life

First, I rejoined another Pokemon community that I hadn't gone on in a while due to being a huge noob while I was there; nowadays, I've made a lot of great friends there, and I don't regret going back at all. Then, I became a freaking teen, which didn't change much of my life tbh.

After that is a bit hazy, but I do remember becoming the scorekeeper for the 7th grade basketball team after I failed to make the actual team, and I brought my friend on to help me out, which was one of the best decisions I did in my middle school life; the job is pretty fun, I get to just hang with my friend until the game, the coach is just one of the best people I've ever met, and its just really amazing. I still do it today. I also got a really nasty case of insomnia during that time, which sucked.

Then, I got out of 7th grade,and went to the same summer camp that I had gone to since I was 6. Don't get me wrong, it was pretty neat there though; I made really good friends with people I never would've talked to before, and did stuff that most people don't get to do, which was great.

Then, 8th grade happened. I became part of my schools newspaper, which was neat. But then, 2 things happened that really made my year suck. First, a lot of relationship drama happened around December that made most of my friends hate me for a week and pretty much broke me because of the stress and emotions. The whole story is really long, so I won't put it here, but needless to say, that was one of the lowest points in my life. The next thing that happened was I started getting all existentialist, and started to wonder about life after death. It really, really scared me, and I couldn't even tell anyone about it cause I didn't want them to experience it too. I've kinda come to terms with it now, but that really wasn't fun either.

Anyway, fast forward to now, and I made it into Honors Band, I'm planning for High School, and I just asked out my crush today, in fact, so things are, for the most part, pretty good :D

Was gonna make a post in here, but then I realized that oh wait I already did once before. Let's see what I've gone and done since then.

Spoiler: here we go again

-Got accepted into an exclusive STEM program that pulls kids from around the county; I take my math, science, and elective class there for half the day while my other half is spent at my regular high school taking English, social studies, and a second elective.
-Joined marching band and ended up becoming a full on band geek (accepted into highest level band class, county honors band 4 years running, brass band that pulls from around the metro area)
-Joined schools Science Olympiad team, am now on its varsity squad
-Co-founded a Smash Bros tournament with one of my friends at the STEM school which is still running strong
-Started playing Dungeons and Dragons
-Met a good majority of my very close friends through all the above bullet points
-Got into a relationship that lasted me for most of high school; no longer in the relationship for a variety of reasons and have subsequently distanced myself from my ex
-Bought my dad's stickshift station wagon that is as old as I am off of him, which I now drive-- he kept fantastic care of it and it still runs well to this day
-Started working at my local hardware store, and I honestly couldn't think of a better first job, I really love it there.
-Began questioning my sexuality a lot more; I strongly suspect I am bi, but the jury's still out on it
-As of now, I'm prepping for my senior year of high school, as well as looking at college. Not sure where I'm gonna go yet, but I'm looking at music composition as a major; I have strong aspirations of becoming a video game music composer, and I think that will help me further my skills.