What made the forums special to me? Over the past few months, I have found myself reminiscing about the past, particularly between 2021 and 2022. I don't know why. Perhaps it's because those years were so simple, and I had so few things to worry about, or maybe it's because I cared about so few things. I'm not entirely sure, but what I do know is that that particular period of time was special and I do miss it.
In 2021, I was in my last year of Primary School: Year 6. In Australia, the 2 stages of education includes Primary School and High School. It was a really fun year - I had a great class, I was friends with Overseer at school and it was just a chill year overall. I remember enjoying going to school everyday (which I still do), but that was probably the first and only year of primary school that I really enjoyed and appreciated it. I wasn't overly active on the forums this year, in fact it took me 8 months to achieve 1,000 posts after joining in December 2020.
I started to become really active during October. During 2021, I was doing really well in school, and I enjoyed playing soccer for my club. I used to do this thing where I would create newspapers on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, since my parents didn't allow me to use my iPad (the device I used to post on the forums) on weekdays. Overall, it was a great year and the forums made it feel like I had something to belong to. The community aspect of the Rblx.Trade site was the thing that I appreciated most about it.
2022 started off very disrupted. This was the first year of high school and due to Coronavirus restrictions, school was cancelled for the opening 3 weeks. Only 3 weeks after school began, Brisbane experienced major floods, and parts of my school needed to be repaired. All schools in my area were closed for a week. Term 1 then continued for a further 3 weeks, before all schools in Queensland had to be closed again, due to a spike in COVID-19 cases. To this point in high school, I was basically this really quiet kid who had no friends, who nobody knew anything about.
Several things happened on the forums in 2022, including the appointment of a moderator and of course, the infamous forums deletion. But what's really nostalgic about 2022 is not only how disrupted the year was, but how simple and worry-free the year was. For the first 8 months of 2022, I had no friends at school, and the forums was the only thing that I felt like I belonged to. To be honest, I didn't really mind not having any friends, however I did feel pretty lonely. The forums community, while chaotic, was one of the few things that made me feel good. I only worried about a few things this year, including soccer, the forums, Roblox and doing well in school (which I did, I consistently got A's). I rarely checked Teams for announcements and only opened my school laptop to do assignments and homework when those things were assigned. This just shows how worry-free I was, which is nostalgic.
The reason I used to always brag about my post count is because that made me feel special; I didn't have friends to make me feel that way, and I never really talked about soccer to anyone. So many forumers made happy during a lonely time in my life, including Doedz, Ashbash, Nikmad08, Overseer, TEM, DrYeahDude, among several others. Thank you to everyone who made me feel like I belonged to something in 2022. Even those I beefed with, I have long forgiven, and I now enjoy their company. I know this has been really long, but I just wanted to tell everyone how grateful I am, given the circumstances in the years mentioned. Thank you to all the forumers for creating a unique community which made me feel a sense of belonging. I am so different to what I was 2 years so, and so much has changed since then. Lots has stayed the same as well to be honest.
