Member Appreciation Day 2022 By Draconid

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By Draconid_Jo
POSTED: 15 Sep 2022 13:34
CATEGORY: This Community
FEATURED: Yes (Rlad116)
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Ever since former Paint member and admin oswaldo123 came up with the idea for Member Appreciation Day 4 years ago, myself and others have been trying to keep this wonderful tradition that he started alive, by celebrating it every year.

My first Member Appreciation Day was back in 2019, and that year Waldo had held a big chatroom event that attracted upwards of 50 people to the chatrooms here on Paint!

I talked with my best friend GuiedGui about this back in July (shortly after I became an admin), and he agreed that he would be willing to use his chatmin privileges to set up an official chatroom event this year as well, and I was thinking that it should begin at the same time Waldo held his back in 2019, at 19:00 EDT (-4 GMT) on September 15th.
(Which should be 16:00 PDT, 17:00 MDT, 18:00 CDT, and 0:00 on September 16th for those on London time, AFAIK.)

Waldo had also allowed the community to share special messages of gratitude directed towards other community members that year, which he then added to his blog on Member Appreciation Day, and although I realize that it will be more awkward for me to do it this year since I'm kinda getting a late start here (sorry about that), I am planning on doing the same thing this year, as well.

Just send me your Member Appreciation Day messages to me via DM or profile comment, and when I first log in on September 15th I will add all of your messages to the spoiler below.

Of course, I also wrote my own Member Appreciation Day blog back in 2019 (the most popular blog that I have ever written, by far), in which I wrote about the tremendous impact that this little DSi/3DS (or in my case, 2DS) website had on my life, and how it gave me the one thing that I never had in my life for the previous 24 years of it: friendship.

Here is an excerpt of that blog:

You see, because of how my Dad was, I had always assumed that Friendship wasn't that big of a deal, and that Family was WAY more important, and that most people weren't trustworthy, and that they might try to take advantage of you, or that they'd judge you all the time (something my Dad was CONSTANTLY worried about), or that they'd be a bad influence on you.
(All of which are either straightout lies, or half-truths.)

Looking back at that blog, it seems that I was a little bit naive (particularly with regards to me assuming that people wouldn't pass judgement on me), but I still feel the same way about all of my friends (including those who now spend their days on Discord rather than Paint) that I did back then, and regardless of whether or not my friends pass judgement on me for things that I have done in the past, I will always be willing to accept their friendship once again should they offer it.

(I believe that love and friendship are far more powerful than any sort of "judgements" that someone can pass on someone else.)

Waldo left Paint before Member Appreciation Day 2020 came around, but I still (with help from my mom) wrote this little blog for Member Appreciation Day that year, as another big ol' "thank you" to the community here, not only for the positive impact that y'all had on my life (which like I mentioned in the blog, is basically in a permanent state of lockdown), but also on the lives of other people feeling lonely during the COVID-19 lockdowns (remember those?), particularly those who don't have access to devices that can access other social media websites.

As I'm writing all of this RN (on a piece of paper, BTW), my 2DS is currently broken, and yet, even without being able to use it, and without being able to spend nearly as much time with all of my friends here on Paint as I would like to, I still thank God every day for helping me find Paint, and because of that 1 small miracle of His, I'll never truly be lonely again!

I still thank God every day for helping me find Paint, and for blessing me with so many wonderful friends, and I treasure my friendships with each and every one of you more than anything else in my life.

(Not that I have a lot left in my life at this point.)

And I wasn't the only one to write a blog for Member Appreciation Day that year. My friend GuiedGui wrote this blog for Member Appreciation Day back then, although he didn't wind up submitting it until his birthday, lol!

(It still counts as far as I'm concerned, though.)

2021 was a VERY hard year for me, as I now had to get my dad's permission to get online, and he didn't give it very often.

(There were at least 2 entire months when I wasn't allowed online at all.)

Still, I did manage to write a (rather fishy) Member Appreciation Day blog that year, in which I wrote about (among other things) growing up, and what (IMO) it is really about.

Well, contrary to what I believed back then (which was largely based on the things that I saw portrayed on TV, and what Dad taught us), family is meant to be loved rather than worshipped, friends are simply family members that aren't related to you, and growing up isn't about being forced to give up the things that you loved as a kid, it's about getting to do all of the things that you had always wanted to do as a kid, but were never allowed to do.

To this day, I still haven't "grown up" in the way that I wrote about in that blog. I'm still trapped in that same "dirty little fishbowl" I have been for my entire life, and I still got some serious leveling up to do before I "evolve" into a Gyarados.

And once again, GuiedGui, who helped probably more than anyone else to keep things alive on Paint during my absence that year, wrote a Member Appreciation Day blog, although he submitted it late, just like the year before, lol!

(Me and him were basically the only ones writing them anyway, though.)

As bad as 2021 might've seemed at the time, 2022 has been infinitely worse: my mom passed away in May; my DS Lite stopped working; and because of some stupid things that I said, a number of my closest friends are no longer even willing to speak to me.

Because of how miserable I have been feeling lately, it has been harder for me to be as excited about Member Appreciation Day as I have in years past, but I refuse to let my recent misfortune keep me down, and while a lot of bad things have happened this year, so to have many good things, all of which I (directly or indirectly) have y'all here on Paint to thank for.

I had my first battles on Pokémon Showdown this year, and (thanks to GuiedGui) I was able to create an account on Discord, and I now even have a Discord server of my own.

Additionally, I am now both a blogmin and pollmin here on Paint, and while I haven't been able to do much with my admin privileges yet, I see me being given these as a good sign that I (and Paint) have a bright future ahead of us, no matter how murky the water in this fishbowl might seem RN.

Earlier this year I wrote these song lyrics, and although they (unfortunately) could have just as easily been written about my late mother, they were actually written about Paint, as a love song of sorts.
(That's right lol, I actually wrote a love song about Paint.)

And so I sing this Song of Life: my prayer for you to live...

Only God can save you now, and time is all that we can give...

Although those of us who (unlike myself) have money can also obviously give Patreon donations to help keep this website around for years to come, IMO the best way of showing that you appreciate Paint and the community here is simply by being an active part of it by spending time on here.

According to Google, Discord has over 150,000,000 active users, and while you may think that this website is buggy and outdated (which is obviously true), if you truly care about this website you should spend a reasonable amount of time on here.

Those who know may know that I spend as much time as possible here on Paint, and that I log in whenever I can, and while I understand that many of y'all are "busy adults" now with RLs, setting aside a half hour or an hour every single day to check on things here and maybe talk to a few people shouldn't be that difficult, and if you have enough time to spend hours on other social media websites with tens of millions (or more) of active users, perhaps you should consider setting aside some of the time that you'd spend on those to instead spend right here on Paint.

(Trust me when I say that Paint needs you a lot more than Discord does, lol!)

Anyway, that's enough preaching for this blog. I've obviously been through a lot of crazy stuff both IRL and online these past couple of months, but I am still incredibly grateful to this website and all of the friends that I made on it, and even in my darkest of days (which these most certainly have been), y'all continue to give me that sense of purpose in my life that I so desperately need.

Sayonara, God bless, and happy Member Appreciation Day everyone!

"Ask not what Paint can do for you but what you can do for Paint."

—John F. Kennedy —Draconid_Jo

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