Yesterday marked my official 1 decade membership here on GA. I still remember that terrified 17 year old kid coming home from school that day and finally deciding to create an account in secret. I met a lot of great people those early first months on here, back when Chat was still a thing. Most of them are long gone now, often randomly disappearing without a trace back into the real world. I think that has been one of the weirdest experiences of my time on the internet, and especially GA. You go from "seeing" someone online every day to suddenly, and the next moment they're gone. You check their profile somewhere down the line and they haven't logged on in years. I sometimes wonder how true to form they were online compared to their real-life selves. What did they change? And more interestingly, why?

GA really did change the course of my life. Without it, I'd probably never have gone to college, never have really accepted being who I am, never become a teacher, and never have ended up in the very happy point in life I'm at right now. It all started with meeting a boy on here who completely threw the trajectory of my life for a 180 spin, and while it didn't last, it led to a series of chance, luck, and good and bad decisions to where I'm at now. Who would have thought creating an account on a random gay site you found through a porn link (true story, circa 2009) would have changed so much. It kinda makes me think of that old Ashton Kutcher movie, The Butterfly Effect. If I hadn't decided to create that account (and I came very close to not doing it), I don't know if I'd even still be here right now. It's a bit chilling to think about, and just proves how even the most minuscule decisions that seem inconsequential at the time can be life-altering. 

I'm not nearly as active as I used to be. A lot of the parts of GA I enjoyed in the past are now gone or changed to be unrecognizable from what I enjoyed so much. That isn't a criticism at all, and things have to evolve to survive. A website from 2010 can't survive in 2019. I mostly just lurk from time to time, occasionally throwing some thoughts out there. That probably won't change, but I doubt I'll ever leave this site completely because of the impact it's had on my life. 

Heres to hopefully another decade of GA.