a long long loooong time ago, back in January, 2002 i signed up for this site and took part in something that i felt was wonderful. i got to show my work and get real input into what to do with it, where it should go from there, and so on (even a great deal of smoke blowing to inflate my ego and motivate me to want more). if you so liked, you could even take part in forums not only with the site adminastrators, but the site FOUNDERS (who were one AND THE SAME) and through those conversations, or even just by reading the posts they left, you could see that they believed in the idea of what they had founded. you felt proud to be a part of it, in that place, and in that time. if you got a daily deviation (and this was before the "Top 5's" list, back when an admin selecting your work was the only way to get a DD and not a popularity contest) you felt like a god. this was back when it was a simple thing to just message °matteo or °jark (though whether they responded to you was another story) if you had a question or a comment or you just wanted to thank them for what they helped share with the world.

that was a long time ago...

back before matteo got disillusioned and left (or was pushed out by $spyed)

before jark got the boot (and i wonder how many people now remember who he was or why he was so feared/respected when they start tossing the yellow alien icon everywhere)

before top 5's

before photography was taken over to the point it is now by webcame whores

before anime was all you saw on the frontpage

before poser constituted the almost WHOLE of the 3d section

before the misdescripted "real-time" section in 3d (which even i tried to fight to be properly described, and which is now completely defunct)

before EVERYONE and their BROTHER could go find some random pic they liked on the internet and post it as their own AND NOT GET BANNED

and before that, before i even got a chance to see it, there was an idea of what this site could've been. and that was what attracted people to this place. you saw all those truly exceptional artists here, and you wanted to be one of them. you wanted your part. whether you got it or not remained to be seen, but you were motivated to try your damnedest to get it.

it simply doesn't feel like that anymore. i used to check this site every day, sometimes a few times every day. but now it's broken some -how, its soul, that feeling of one-ness, is gone for me now. and it hurts to see something i cared about so adamantly turn into that.

i just went through and cleared my gallery of what i knew i could get today, the rest will wait for now, but it sucked so much to go through my gallery and have to delete each and every one individually, because each one was a memory that won't come back. recently, i lost all the work on my backup hard-drive (ironically, i found this out as i was trying to back-up the back-up), and almost all of my digital work within the last 4 or 5 years went with it. it didn't occur to me completely until today that there were things i had posted on this site (some of which got deleted from my gallery last year) that i will never EVER get back, and that DA was the only place it still existed, or quite possibly, most of which will never exist again. i knew this before, but never completely understood it until i had to systematically empty the gallery of all that i used to hold most dear.

the pure horror of that thought practically brought tears to my eyes (practically, but let's be honest, it'll take more than that to make me bawl like a little baby), the sense of all that time being for nothing leaves a sick feeling in my stomach... but not an unfamiliar one. i recognize it only because i feel that when i come back here. that feeling of wrongness you get when you know that that's not the way it was meant to be, even if your knowledge of that idea only scratches the surface of what it's creators intended.

i may still come back here and poke around at all the people i was watching before, but i doubt i'll ever sit @ my comp at night like i used to, browsing through the sections and wondering to myself how the hell all so many wonderful artists could amass in the same place at the same time and not manage to change the world through their vision (and i wish to thank all those people who made me feel that sense of wonder, i truly do... well.... thank you...).

signing off...