User blog:Rogaine/Hitting the Dusty Old Trail

Surprise! I'm leaving. Probably should have done it a couple of years ago.

I don't want to write some nostalgic post about why I'm leaving (probably will end up doing that anyway) and I'm not prewriting this on a word document and I don't plan on editing it very much, so I guess I'll just write it as a go along and see where I end up. Always preferred winging it, as a lot of my work indicates.

The Why
I guess I should start with why I'm leaving in the first place. Two years ago, some really explosive drama involving myself, SM, Bond, and Josh, as well as several other people occurred, the specifics of which I'm not going to get into. At this point, apologies have been made and more or less everyone involved has reconciled, but at the time it really drove me to take a more escapist route, which looking back may not have been the wisest course of action but I think it was the best thing I could have done at the time. For pretty much all of 2015 I had basically no communication with the wiki and took to the sidelines in my main online group of friends. I cultivated a group of friends that I played and still play video games with, finished high school and completed my first semester of college in that period.

Around the end of 2015 I felt an inspiration to come back to the wiki and do something here again, thinking that it was still the old times. I spent a fair bit of time on the chat (rip) over the early to middle part of this year and got reacquainted with some people I knew from before, as well as sort of "starting over" with other people. It was a good time, no doubt, and I enjoyed talking to the plethora of nerds that inhabit this space, but it wasn't the same as I remember, I guess. Maybe it's because I outgrew the community, maybe it's because I've been less and less interested with Bionicle the toyline recently, maybe it's because I've been doing a lot of other things in the last year or so, it's probably a combination of all those things.

The Who
What it isn't, is the fault of anyone besides me. I don't want this blog post to sound like that me leaving was because of anyone on the wiki. Think of it as a situation of "it's not you, it's me. On that note (nice segway, eh), I want to take a moment to thank a few of the people who have befriended me and impacted my life in the most positive ways in the past six and a half years.


 * Chicken Bond - The Watson to my Sherlock. The Roadhog to my Junkrat. The banter-brother. The best friend. What can be said that hasn't been already. For the last six and a half years, you've been a constant in my life and one of the people that I care most deeply for, both on and offline. Though you made your exit a few months ago (about time), we still regularly talk about whatever comes to mind (the train photoshop will always be legendary), and I hope it continues until we're both old and senile.
 * Jman98 - Although you left for better places a couple of years ago and we haven't really spoken since, I will never forget and cannot overstate how much of a good friend you were and how fondly I remember our times together, the good and the bad. I hope that wherever you've landed treats you well and will continue doing so.
 * Shadowmaster - The absolute madman himself. My partner ruseman. Although we've had many good times partaking in the ruse and talking smack, both to each other and about other people, a moment of clarity must be taken for me to acknowledge how good of a friend you are to me. I don't know what I would do if I were cut off from your brand of insanity.
 * Varkanax39 - Although it has admittedly been a while since we've spoken, you were one my my closest friends and someone who I could trust to rip off the band-aid and give me good, constructive criticism on my writing work. And of course, I also could not forget the massive, two hour catch-up chat I gave you last time we spoke and our subsequent hilarious games of Cards Against Humanity.
 * Firedrag1091 - My Russian compatriot. Although I have known you for less time than those previously mentioned, we've still had great conversations, and you're one of the few online friends I have that I feel as though I can talk about most anything with, whether it be something about Destiny or heavy, real life events.
 * BobTheDoctor27 - The wiki's newest dictator also happens to be someone I've grown quite fond of talking to, whether it be in vitriolic banter or about the finer things of MOCing. Take care of the wiki in my absence, and thanks for being a good sport, big man.
 * BionicleChicken - The man who happens to be the better half of Bond, and a man who I've happened to take quite a liking to over the past few years. It's always nice to have someone around who's willing to indulge my rambling, whether it be my insanely long diatribes about my story that never was or our recent discussions about FMA. I hope to keep up with you on some sort of other outlet when I'm gone.
 * Invader39 - Though we may not have quite gotten off on the right foot in 2014, I'd like to think that we more or less started over when I came back this year and came to enjoy each other's company. So I guess that's a pretty good benefit of me coming back after all.

There're tons of other people who I came to know and enjoy talking to since 2010, but in the interest of finishing this post tonight I can't list them all. If you're reading this, hopefully you know who you are. To everyone else, thank you. You make this community what it is, it's just that I'm not really a part of it anymore.

The Next
So what happens now that I'm leaving? For starters, as soon as I post this blog, I'm blanking and marking all of my pages for deletion. It doesn't seem right leaving behind unfinished fragments of a story that will 99% probably never be posted here, if it's even written in the first place. I'll be keeping up with the comments on this post for a few days and will occasionally check back here in the future, maybe leaving a stray comment or talk page message. For the most part though, this is it. Maybe retirement will be all it's cracked up to be.

It's possible that at some point down the line, maybe I'll get a surge of enthusiasm again and come back, invalidating this post. Unlikely, but we'll see. When I was talking to Bond about this, I said I didn't want this to sound melodramatic or melancholic or anything, but I also didn't want to undersell all the wonderful times I've had here. Basically, the conclusion I came to is that this post should respect the time I spent here and all the friends I made, but not mourn my leaving, which I hope gets reflected in the comments as well.

This also doesn't mean I'm done making MOCs or writing. I'll probably keep posting MOCS here, and I have two YouTube channels, one for games and whatever else pops into my head, and one that may eventually find use for Bionicle related content. It's also not out of the question that I'll join something like BZP or TTV, or become active in the Bionicle Tumblr tag at some point. For now though, take it easy.

-Matt Roden, AKA Jareroden97