Am I going crazy?
Would I even know?
Am I right back where I started fourteen years ago?
Wanna guess the ending? If it ever does
I swear to God that all I’ve ever wanted was
A little bit of everything, all of the time
A bit of everything, all of the time
Apathy’s a tragedy, and boredom is a crime
I’m finished playing, and I’m staying inside

Bo Burnham, Goodbye (INSIDE)

Fourteen years ago, I moved to Detroit. I barely knew Kyle and Percival. I was less than a year experienced as a web developer, less than a year removed from escaping a boss I loathed, but I was already looking for a better way to run our community online. I’d built a CMS from scratch and was trying to escape vBulletin. I was reaching out to people and growing, fast. But I’d also put on 20 pounds since college and needed to get back in shape so I looked up my dojo for the first time.

Now Percival’s an adult and Kyle is gone. The project that I thought was “life’s work”-grade was actually just a warm-up. And I find myself needing to migrate my community to greener pastures once again, staring down the barrel of a project with unknown scope. I don’t remember being this emotionally exhausted, but also I’m not sure I was listening enough before to know the truth. I’ve spent a year and a half in therapy, trying to escape grief and isolation. A pandemic worth of absence from the dojo put those 20 pounds back on me, too.

I’m a wildly different person than I was 14 years ago.

And yet, I can hear the rhyme.