User blog:MightyUke416/Thank You

Hey people, Uke here.

I don't really have a major announcement to make, but I'm making this blog post because I've been doing a lot of thinking lately. I need to thank this community in a major way.

I've got a lot of crap going on in my life right now. Most of it I don't feel comfortable talking about in a blog like this, but I believe that at the centre of it all is my own issues with depression and anxiety. Please, don't take this post as my fishing for sympathy, because that is the last thing I want to do right now. However, I do want to talk a bit about why this community does mean so much to me, especially right now.

As some of you know, I joined this wiki on June 12, 2015 (according to my user page) as I was recovering from a broken collarbone that I had suffered during a car accident that occurred on April 24 of the same year. Quite frankly, I was bored, I had known this wiki existed for a while at that point, and I had voting histories for a number of fantasy seasons stored on my laptop. So I figured "why not bring these stories to life and post them on this site?" At the time, I never expected to engage with this community at all, and I certainly never expected to join the chat room. That all changed when I had received comments from Dan and Panda on my Montserrat season page and the pages of my Montserrat contestants: Leila Mostyn, Alex Gregoire, and Ella Sing. I was just learning the coding at the time, and those comments got me thinking "Wow. People really do read this stuff that I post." Days went on, and I noticed that Dan and Panda were my first 2 loyal readers, which made me feel good. I had soon decided "Why not?" and joined chat with one or both of them (I can't exactly remember who was on), and I began being introduced to this community. Before long, I was making friends, and it was all very foreign to me because generally speaking, I'm a very introverted person until you get to know me. I never anticipated to have so many friends on this wiki, nor did I ever expect my writing to be popular.

This wiki, in a lot of ways, is my escape from life. Prior to joining this wiki, I was heavily involved with the Youth Parliament of Manitoba, but unfortunately, I aged out of the organization in 2014 after I turned 21 and lost the election for an executive position. While this wiki never quite replaced what I lost from Youth Parliament, it does help fill the void that leaving the organization left in my heart. As I said, I have a lot of crap going on right now, and I'm just so grateful to be able to come to this wiki and just write/read and escape from what's going on at home, or what's going on in my own head. I'm also grateful to be able to interact with and chat with such a supportive community including people like Tangle, Jong, Tozza, Pineapple, Coolio, Bryce, Waffle, Surfer, JT, Dan, WC, etc., etc. I'm sure there are a lot of people that I didn't mention in that list, so please don't feel offended if you're not included, because you guys are great supports as well.

I feel like I'm just rambling at this point, so I'm not going to go on for too much longer. But yeah, I want to thank everyone here on the wiki from the bottom of my heart for just being there. This wiki is a great escape as I mentioned and I feel so, incredibly lucky to be part of such a supportive community. Please, don't ever change.

Sincerely,

Uke