Post by PTAV on Jul 6, 2012 16:50:32 GMT -5
First off I would like to say that I can't possibly apologize enough for going missing. Looking at my recent posts and seeing that I haven't visited this site in almost four months makes me feel sick to my stomach, so I can only imagine how any one of you must feel about it.
While I am by no means trying to excuse what happened or sweep this under the rug, I would like to stress that I did not simply just forget about this site or lose interest in it.
The first time I went missing for a few days, someone asked me if I was alright in the c-box. I can't remember who it was at this point, but I remember that I told them something alone the lines of "it was a little family problem, and hopefully it's over and done with now". In hindsight this was a gross understatement, but I had no real way of knowing how quickly things were going to turn sour.
What followed was sort of a perfect storm of problems, of varying severity and difficulty. I don't want to go into everything here because the majority of it is very personal and, as I said previously, the purpose of this post is not to make excuses for myself. I will say, however, that the "little family problem" I mentioned turned into a big financial problem for my immediate family. A large part of my free time since then has been trying to help them out in that regard in any way I can, although thankfully that situation is doing better at the moment. I also learned that my grandfather (who was already suffering from a few health complications) had a large mass surgically removed from his bladder. It's entirely possible that it wasn't cancer, and it's entirely possible that what they removed and treated was enough to keep it coming back if it was. Still, considering that my mother had breast cancer not too many years ago, it's the elephant in the room that nobody really wants to talk about.
With all of this stuff going on, so little free time to deal with it, and everything compounding to raise my stress levels higher than they've ever feasibly been, I'm sorry to say that this forum completely slipped my mind. Honestly if I hadn't sat down yesterday and gone through the backlog of emails in my inbox and seen the message from Roam, there's really no telling how long it would have taken for this place to pop back into my head.
This place was great, and I genuinely loved every character I accepted here. You were all terrific members and very amicable and forgiving every time I slipped up somewhere and made a mistake/oversight in my dealings with this forum, and there's not enough space in this post to describe just how thankful I am for that. I would love nothing more than to keep this place going as is, increasing the advertising to drum up more new members and actually delegating power to new members of staff like I said I was planning to before I dropped off the face of the earth, but I have a gut feeling that that just isn't possible now. To ask any of you to trust me again is, I feel, asking entirely too much considering...well, everything.
I wrote this up for two reasons; 1, because it would just be irresponsible to simply never address this. I've personally been through too many forums where the site dwindled and activity died off due to an absent staff member who just up and left one day without so much as a "goodbye". 2, because there's always a need for closure in a situation like this and you all deserve it.
Once again, all I can say is that I'm sorry something like this ever happened.
While I am by no means trying to excuse what happened or sweep this under the rug, I would like to stress that I did not simply just forget about this site or lose interest in it.
The first time I went missing for a few days, someone asked me if I was alright in the c-box. I can't remember who it was at this point, but I remember that I told them something alone the lines of "it was a little family problem, and hopefully it's over and done with now". In hindsight this was a gross understatement, but I had no real way of knowing how quickly things were going to turn sour.
What followed was sort of a perfect storm of problems, of varying severity and difficulty. I don't want to go into everything here because the majority of it is very personal and, as I said previously, the purpose of this post is not to make excuses for myself. I will say, however, that the "little family problem" I mentioned turned into a big financial problem for my immediate family. A large part of my free time since then has been trying to help them out in that regard in any way I can, although thankfully that situation is doing better at the moment. I also learned that my grandfather (who was already suffering from a few health complications) had a large mass surgically removed from his bladder. It's entirely possible that it wasn't cancer, and it's entirely possible that what they removed and treated was enough to keep it coming back if it was. Still, considering that my mother had breast cancer not too many years ago, it's the elephant in the room that nobody really wants to talk about.
With all of this stuff going on, so little free time to deal with it, and everything compounding to raise my stress levels higher than they've ever feasibly been, I'm sorry to say that this forum completely slipped my mind. Honestly if I hadn't sat down yesterday and gone through the backlog of emails in my inbox and seen the message from Roam, there's really no telling how long it would have taken for this place to pop back into my head.
This place was great, and I genuinely loved every character I accepted here. You were all terrific members and very amicable and forgiving every time I slipped up somewhere and made a mistake/oversight in my dealings with this forum, and there's not enough space in this post to describe just how thankful I am for that. I would love nothing more than to keep this place going as is, increasing the advertising to drum up more new members and actually delegating power to new members of staff like I said I was planning to before I dropped off the face of the earth, but I have a gut feeling that that just isn't possible now. To ask any of you to trust me again is, I feel, asking entirely too much considering...well, everything.
I wrote this up for two reasons; 1, because it would just be irresponsible to simply never address this. I've personally been through too many forums where the site dwindled and activity died off due to an absent staff member who just up and left one day without so much as a "goodbye". 2, because there's always a need for closure in a situation like this and you all deserve it.
Once again, all I can say is that I'm sorry something like this ever happened.
