As cliché as it sounds, it's great to be back... returning to a place where I'm very comfortable with the people and the discussion. I consider this a new forum, where everyone has got a fresh start.
Well, with the complete loss of the old website, I'm feeling like this can be a fresh start for myself, and everyone else. I'm sure some, if not all of you feel the same. Mistakes of the past have been erased, a gift rarely given to us in real life, and I'm willing to overlook and, in fact, drop any issues I had with anyone who has conducted themselves in an unsavoury manner in the past. And I hope that if anyone thought that of me, they they are willing to do the same.
I think this community will benefit greatly from having a clean slate. Personally, having become accustomed to the community but still having those old posts (from early days where I'd rather forget what I've said) and coming back from a two year absence (not just from TBDL, but the whole DL/TB-thing as a whole), it was a little hard to integrate back into something I left a mark on and just, to put it bluntly, didn't really bother with or care much for. But in that particular time reference, I felt comfortable in just talking to people I had already met and wasn't particularly concerned in participating in any diaper-related activity. Now though, I wish I hadn't left the community, even if I was on a strong purge. I've come to realise that the reason I came back and became active on TBDL was not because of the diaper and infantilism discussion, but the people and what they had to say on topics beyond the thing that has brought us all together. It's always good to have a nice chat about it, but when it's the focus of your discussion all the time, it becomes so mundane that you lose all interest in it. My brief time on TBDL before my absense left such a mark on me, that two years later I still remembered the community and the more serious, but helpful tone of it's users.
I'm not at all concerned about the loss of my posts and my rep. My rep count only stood as a tribute to my posts and how I was perceived by others. It only makes sense that if my posts are gone, that my rep does too. I genuinely like to leave a good impression on others - rep just assigns me a number relative to how well I've come across to people. It was never, nor will it ever be my intention to make a post "just for the rep". I posted purely for the enjoyment and satisfaction of getting my ideas across and to invigorate people's mind's. It is unfortunate that such a testament has been wiped clean, but if anything it's encouraged me more to stay within the community. One thing I've very adamant about is having a fresh start every so often. To learn from experience is the best way to learn, but to be given a clean slate whilst still retaining that knowledge allows you to build up something better than anything you could have done previously.
God damn I need to stop writing opinion columns... >_<
