To
Sir With Love:
At times I liken this to a job in some ways: Some employees come and go. Some employees put forth more effort than others. Some have titles that others don't feel they deserve. The employees bicker about the management, the management bicker about the employees. People keep scrawling things on the bathroom stalls.
In other ways, I don't. For those of you who are new to it, there is no real way to explain it, although some analogies come close. It's just another website, but boy howdy can it change you.
I didn't know this place existed until Alpheus dragged me here kicking and screaming. He discovered this place through a stile project entry, I believe. I was one of the few people that managed to stick around past the initial novelty/trolling (I did not participate in that, as I had no idea that stile was the reason I got here). This place lured me in ways that no other site managed to - it seduced me with words.
How intoxicating it is, to have almost immediate feedback on your thoughts, fingers plinking on the keyboard and hitting that shiny button that submits your write-up. Forget XP, or all of that. I never really understood it when I first arrived and even now it is of little use to me. To me it was all about that feedback.
Everthing2 also drove me to be a better writer. Or rather, the people who contributed here did. I would feed off of the words of others like so many fine apéritifs. When I first started contributing here, my contributions were little more than vignettes, scraps of thought spread on the page. I was a blank slate, and little by little, you all have seeped into me and helped fill in the lines. Some of you are long departed, but trust me, not forgotten.
Happy Birthday e2, you have been a vicious and cruel master but you made me bigger/better/smarter/insert option here. You made me laugh, I mean laughter where you can't breathe and your sides are splitting from the happy you just can't contain. You made me cry, huge soppy tears that made me both pleased and ashamed to be crying. Listen, because this is the most important part: You introduced me to so very many wonderful people, and of all things I can never regret this. I can only hope I have given back even one tenth of what you have given me.
As a pre-teen, you are exactly where you ought to be - staggering on the edge of "Who am I? Who am I?" and balancing between "Shut up, you can't tell me what to do!" and "Please oh please can I please be a kid again?". And I am staggering between "Hey, remember when we were kids and the whole world was our playground? Let's have that back" and "Chin up, tuck in your shirt, give your best smile, no you cannot have more pie."
I hope I'm around to see what the next chapter brings. I hope you're around for it, too.