Can’t believe that it was 11 years ago when I started roaming the Land of V. It truly feels like it was, maybe not yesterday, but definitely not more than a decade ago.
 
Over the past year my activity has faded away because of my new “appointment” by physically going to my workplace. I’m scheduled to succeed my father at the family business in the short term (if he allows such thing to happen, not gonna rant about that here) so my workload is ever increasing as I take over more and more of his duties and I become more experienced in all areas. This of course reduces my free time, which coupled with living alone means I barely have any time for myself and I’m still having issues with defining a proper schedule or stay energetic during the afternoon to do chores.
 
Things are also improving in the personal level. I reignited a past relationship which has returned to fully official status nearly a month ago, and with that came a new friendship with a neighbor of mine that also has potential to become very important. I also recruited a handful of board gamers from a very big group we have in order to stay away from the casuals and focus on heavier and more complex games, we’re trying to meet up every now and then and so far we’ve had relative success. We’re also making new recruits every so often, so things look promising for the near future.
 
I guess that my activity in this place will be reduced to a relatively strong period between August and December, with a short pause in October as we have a scheduled surge of work every year, and enter a state of dormancy between January and July because the workload can be heavy specially in January, though February should be more relaxed in the near future with a possible abolition of duties due to much needed technological advances and the usual pause during March to prepare for the big quarter. Also, as my real life progresses, this could be reduced even further but I will try to postpone that as much as I can because this place means just too much for me.
 
Even though July is a difficult month, I’ll try my best to restart my activity for the forthcoming months that should be more relaxed. I still have projects in mind I’d like to do, and a lack of free time won’t be enough to stop me xD
 
Here’s to more years to come, and let’s also raise a toast for me missing out on my 4000 days milestone just a couple weeks ago, that can certainly show you the chaos I have in my mind and how I tend to forget and/or postpone things

Congrats on 11 years Palen! I'm glad things are going better for you personally! I can definitely relate on the less time here thing, but I gotta tell ya I think it'll surprise ya how much of a weight it feels like comes off your shoulder when the day comes hopefully far in the future your forced to retire but I really didn't believe it when I was told as such by some former admins but even though I love it here I feel like I have more time for other things now that I don't have to be on every day, but enough about me this thread is all about you! Here's hoping you keep your gray banner and to another 4000 days hopefully!!!

claytune : Yeah, it's a weight off my shoulders indeed, but it's not like I want to be more active out of self-imposement or anything like that. I do see threads I'd like to post in or things I'd like to do, but I simply don't have the time or energy to get ahead with it.

It's great to have time for other things, but as you will surely know, I miss having time for myself. I'm a solitary person, and while I do enjoy company and socializing I do sometimes need to stay back, I can't properly explain why but I perfectly know the feeling. And given how life is right now, the time I take for myself is more for recovering than anything so in reality I don't have much time for myself.

I like how the lines on my username highlight where my name appears because it's almost unseeable in certain conditions. Absolutely feels like I'm a spy or something, and I want to keep that until the end of August for a change. Maybe after this I'll finally trial a custom color too and get rid of the milked coffee standard, who knows xD