8 years is a long journey, and it’s been such a beautiful and remarkable one. I’m amazed and humbled by how diligently the community kept merrily chugging along, even as we said goodbye to older members and welcomed in new ones (and many a time, returning ones!). So many stories that I’m a little overwhelmed just thinking about it.Ĭharacters and members have come and gone over the years, and so much of Colony 22 has changed since it was first born in late 2013, and I have absolutely no regrets. We had games nights and Games Events and over the years we have told so many stories. We had so much fun, didn’t we guys? Together we saw the beginning and (almost) end of a global pandemic lockdown, we kept each other company and laughed when laughing felt otherwise impossible. We have done just as many silly and frivolous ones, and I am grateful for both, and for everything in between. We have done so many good and powerful things. As much as I always knew and understood that this day would come eventually, I could hardly wrap my head around how it would feel when it did, because I didn’t allow myself to think about it for too long. You have been the magical Neverland to my Peter Pan, when I was just a lost boy looking for love and connection, for story and creativity and people to share it with.Īnd so my heart is breaking. I don’t know how to stress it enough or in the right way for it to stick, but you have not only touched my life, you have also changed me as a person and you have all had a hand in who I am today. To members new and old, to recent members and to those whose chapters with us ended many moons ago, I wish I could express in words how much you all mean to me, and the utterly irreplaceable place you have in my heart. I could talk forever, but would never even come close to covering everything.Īs proud as I am of this community, I am also so, so humbled by it, and by each and every one of you. This community, and every single person in it, kept me afloat in some of the toughest years of my life, and in some of the most rewarding, and of the brief list of things I’d consider my most significant and worthwhile accomplishments in my life so far, this has been by far one of the most fulfilling. In running this place, I have learned so much about myself, as well as about friendship and life in general. It brought me joy and excitement and laughter-and people to share all that with-when at my best. This community brought me comfort and connection when I was at my worst and my loneliest. I started this place when I was still in my early twenties, before I had been accepted to film school, before I moved away from home, before I came out, before I transitioned. I don’t know if I can quite describe to you what this place has meant to me over the past decade, and how deeply the friendships I have made here have changed me as a person. It gave me a sense of community and kinship I’d never had before, and fused bonds for me and around me, that changed my life forever. Seeing all of you come together in joy and collaboration, knowing that you had met in the vivid dreamscape world of my imagination and had built upon it like a coral reef, a beautiful display of colour and spirit and individual imprints of your own design that I never could have formed all on my own. It was my little brain-baby oasis where I met truly amazing, kind and talented people and writers, who inspired me, challenged me, and who fell in love with a world I’d dreamt up, and then dove right in with me to foster it, adopt it, and make it their own.Īnd that’s been the most rewarding part of this whole journey. Colony 22 became a place of friends, found-family and inspiration. 8 and a half years ago, if you’d told me the story world I’d been scribbling about in my little notebook would grow up to be one of the best and most beautiful elements of my young-to-not-so-young adult life, I don’t know if I’d have believed you.Ĭolony 22 started from almost nothing-it was born from a heartbeat of passion, a handful of excitement and a modest collection of relatively new friends from a place called Belvedere, and it grew to become a hugely significant and constant rock in my life.
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