I love the feeling of nostalgia, it's a wonderful and beautiful feeling, but it can also be quite sad and painful. Wonderful and beautiful because these are such great moments that you had the luxury of experiencing, sad and painful because you might never experience those moments again, at least not quite in the same way. And there's something about that that really just gets to me, that makes me crave the feeling of nostalgia, despite the negative effects that it can bring.
Often times, I like to go back and visit an old forum I used to be on. The site is all but dead now, it was never that big of a place to begin with; but when it was active it was this most wonderful community of people. It was my first real forum that I had ever been a part of. Oh sure, I had joined plenty of other forums before, but I never really had the opportunity to truly blend in with the community until I came across this one.
So when I'm there, visiting, I shift through all my old posts, all the conversations I've had with other people in the past, and just look at the way I transform myself from a total outsider into a key member of the community. It is absolutely amazing how much I have changed since then. I changed more in the two-ish years I was active on that forum than I had in my entire life up until, and it's all thanks to the wonderful people that were apart of that community. It's heartbreaking to see it so barren now, but the memories of when I was there still make me smile.
Not all the memories I created there were good ones, in fact, I'd go so far as to say most of them were cringe-worthy stupid mistakes that I made as a result of being a noob to forums and just having a general lack of proper social skills. But I can still smile at them, because they allow me to see how much I have grown as a person and how much I have yet to grow. I may not have been there for very long, but it felt like I spent a lifetime there. So much of who I am today stems from my experiences on that one forum.
I guess what I'm trying to say here is that there is nothing better than being nostalgic for the moments that defined you.
I know that feel (Both with the forum thing, and how nostalgia can be painful at times. I always wish I could go back in time to when I was a kid)
I use to be apart of a forum that's basically dead now. I went in as a forum noob, I wasn't very liked by the main boss as I came off as VERY aggressive. So he was looking for new mods and I sent in a resume. He REALLY didn't want to interview me but the other guy vanished for a week so due to attendance, I became the guy to interview ^^ So we do the interview on skype and he's like "You know, I thought you were an angry little boy, but now I see you're actually a pretty silly and fun guy XD" (That's why I started using so many faces in my paragraphs, without them I feel like they're a little confrontational and super angry DX Then again, I had things like this as my avatar
So yeah XD, aggressive typing and aggressive avatars wasn't a very good combo XD
So I became a moderator and he discovered something, I had allot of good ideas, and was a smart cookie. So I was quickly promoted to a super moderator, re-designed the moderator team who were stupid/jerks at the time (One moderator threw a fit when asked to do something super simple) So I reforged the moderator team to be super nice to people and help through issues, not just lock a topic and let the anger remain. The new moderator team hated me XD I was kinda strict on them. But everyone said that our moderator force was the nicest and best they've ever seen.
(I should tell the tale of the old moderator force XD These people were ridicules. One day I came home to one of them screaming at me after school saying I said all this shit to him (DURING an important meeting -.- I had to move it to forum staff lounge so the meeting could go on) Turns out my bosses friend logged in using MY name and said allot of shit to him before I got home from school. The MOMENT he saw the legit me log in, he logged off so I didn't even see my name copied. Only fairly recently has my boss told me who it was XD You would think that's super mean, but that person was one of the reasons why the moderator force was terrible DX)
But that was stupid because my boss was yelling at ME too about it, knowing full who did that in the first place. He was testing me as a moderator and how I would react to that, and I reacted with an A+ rating ^^
So then I quickly became a hyper moderator (Basically a co-admin) and this is where my title Pharaoh came from XD He changed his title to "Emperor" so I thought "What's better than an Emperor? Pharaohs are seen as gods or gods messengers, so I'll be a Pharaoh ^^"
But one of the moderators (Like the ONLY one that wasn't my idea XD) got into a fight with another forum, brought them all over while we were on vacation, I come on and make everyone happy, some stay, the other left on good terms. The ones who stayed though started brainwashing my boss and made him make stupid changes and by the time he went to make them all happy, we lost all our previous members, and since they made ours a kinda clone of their own, they just went back. The only ones staying were bullies. WELL my boss is a smart cookie and makes connections pretty well, he found the two leaders of their friend group odd and found out that they were the same people, that REALLY shook their entire group. And from there, they went down hill and eventually left, gaining a new leader to bully a different forum. So now my boss knows better ^^
And like you, I enjoy reading back to things (As far to a certain point, we had to hard refresh the forum due to something stupid and lost everything from my personal beginnings and before. Shame too, I wanted to re-read just how hostile I actually sounded DX (And re-read my rising the ranks and see some of the more funny moments)
Although I am a bit jealous of you though XP I'm mostly unchanged from back then, meaning that I don't really see growth like you do. The only growth I see is super minor like adding faces and not seeming as aggressive anymore.
Whenever I re-read my stuff, I still agree 100%. There are times I read a post, agree 100% and be like "Wow, that guy knows what's up" then look at the name and see that its my own so I'm like "Oh, that explains ALLOT XD" (Which makes me wonder even more how people don't seem to understand what I type, I understand my own words 100% XP, even from 4 years ago.
But the biggest nostalgia moment for me is whenever I go on my walks, I basically relive my entire childhood as I walk past the 3 coldisacs/old friends houses. Super funny times. Lots of sports, lots of talking/jokes/all that good stuff, it was more or less perfect. Then everyone had to go and grow up >.<
