European Graphic Novels+

So... unfortunately, this is going to be very 'ME'-based, and I'm not a big fan of that in general. Oh well. Eat your crow, Johnny. Gobble it up, please.

So, so, so-- I had a bit of a meltdown here last Thursday, ranting a bit and posting generally useless threads. First and foremost, I apologise to the community, and hope I haven't harmed its reputation too terribly much. I also want to talk about what happened to cause that, and what's going to change, going forward. Fact is, it was a killer-combo of things that day, so maybe I'll just list them out:

• BURNOUT: For a long time now I've been aiming for a 'post per day,' because I wanted to stock up the community with lots of content, such that users could dive in to it whenever they liked and have a good, long, fun read. As a matter of fact, after hitting the one-year anniversary mark on August 1st, we actually did average over a post per day, in large part thanks to my co-pilot Nacktmull. At this point, however, I think it's time to retire that goal and NOT artificially push myself as hard on that stuff, anymore.

• PERSONAL HEALTH: I happen to have CFS/ME, which tends to be an incurable, fatal disease. In effect, I'm fairly-exhausted 24/7, and have a fraction of the stamina that most people my age do. My wrists, feet, and lower back regularly ache, and I spend about 95% of my awake-time lying on my couch. I'd love to do lots more (including exercise, which I adore), but unfortunately when I DO, I tend to get something called "PEM," just like others in my boat. Anyway, this disease is hugely & regularly frustrating to me, and it literally (not figuratively!) seeps in to almost every part of my life. For some quick examples, I had to end my career at around ~30yo, and various relationships are just too hard to maintain, sadly.

• BOOZE: To be perfectly honest, I was having some vodka drinks that day. I'm not proud of it, but one thing alcohol crazily, wonderfully does is to temporarily mask my pain, as well as artificially boosting my blood sugar. And of course, too much can obviously get me off the track of 'production mode.' Yeah, whoops......

• FLAWED: One of my other frustrations here is that I get the impression that people wrongly conceive of this place as my personal blog, with the occasional brilliant guest appearance, but that's not something I never aimed for, nor wanted. I think my posts are generally good, interesting and informative, but I'm not some super-human-production-machine here, and frankly I rather resent being looked at that way. So in a sense, I don't mind letting the mask slip at times, revealing that I'm just as much a flawed, troubled doofus as the poor chap down the road, who lives in a makeshift tent on public land. I mean, say what you want-- but I'm sure that guy/gal has their talented qualities as well. At least, that's how I'd like to think of such things, y'know?

• DISAPPOINTMENT #1: Honestly, I'm disappointed in the readers here. I've repeatedly welcomed anyone to post any sort of thought or material related to BD, and yet the more the subscribers seem to grow, the less prone they seem willing to do so. Almost as if everyone's waiting around for ME to furnish my content, read as they like, then move on to something else. Wellsir, that is definitely NOT why this community was founded. Indeed-- I still haven't had a single response to the volunteer requests I made last month. And please understand-- these are light volunteer jobs that require a very small amount of effort on a weekly basis.

• DISAPPOINTMENT #2: Altho I LOOOVE my host & instance, I really can't say that I'm super-happy with the Lemmy community au total. As in-- when a bunch of us broke away from Reddit over a year ago (and note that I'm straddling the line under my same username there, haha), to me I thought the main idea was just beautiful, specifically involving a P2P, open, volunteer-based alternative, free of corporate greed. Well, as of now, the future of the FV (including Lemmy) still seems unclear, and frankly I'm a bit gobsmacked by the relative-lack of community-spirit here, in which I thought there might be far more common affection for the whole project. Not from the people who made real sacrifices (because they DID!), but moreso from a theoretically involved, knowledgeable userbase. Instead, no-- it's almost like Spez' freakout from a year+ ago, plus the way Reddit just doubled-down on extracting value from their userbase, essentially never happened. To me that's both creepy and weird. Shame! Shame on everyone here for thinking 'they had no personal responsibilities, nor gratitude for the new place.' And shame on you all who bought in to that.

• SHAKY PROFESSIONALISM: Despite everything said above, this indeed is my self-appointed volunteer job, and I don't think it's good to have little meltdowns very often, and I doubt this is really the place for making "a cry for help." So again, I apologise to everyone, and... tell you what-- I'm going to be looking after my own health better from now on, which immediately means retiring the 'aim for one post per day' mentality. Indeed, let the record show that this is YOUR community now, and no longer my 'personal blog.' Now if you're wondering how I am as a moderator? I've had almost 25yrs of experience as a mod, super-mod, admin & head-admin across a variety of sites, the most recent one pinball-simulation-based, with hundreds of thousands of users. In any case, my general aim is to listen with kindness and find amicable solutions, where possible.

Hey, thanks for reading, folks!
Haha, I guess sometimes you just have to embarrass yourself sufficiently in order to make the proper course-change, mais non?

EDIT: oof, I forgot the pic. This seems to be from outside a prison in Gdańsk!