Xpression.v2

I’ve been a member of Neowin for over seven years. For more than five of those years, I have been a member of the staff. It’s been a long road, that’s for sure. I, pretty much, grew up on Neowin. I went from being a teenager ready to burn down the world to being a calm collected man, also ready to burn down the world. So, why leave?

To be honest, the biggest reason for stepping down is Melanie. The fact of the matter is, I’d much rather spend time being with her than dealing with a bunch of morons on the internet who decide today’s the perfect day to call me a Nazi. I think I used Neowin, for all those years, to fill a void and a lot of empty time. Well, now I have something much more important to me and I just feel as though it’s best to give all of my attention to that. I’ll still read and post on Neowin, but now I don’t have to worry about cleaning up messes as I stumble across them.

Another deciding factor was my lack of motivation. I think this ties into everything I just said about Melanie being more important (obviously, by the way), but I just don’t have the drive to want to deal with the nonsense. It gets tiring to always have to step into a conversation and play the role of the parent instead of partaking in the discussion on hand. It really starts to make you hate opening up a potentially interesting thread because you just know it’s going to be a war zone in there.

This isn’t my final goodbye to Neowin. As I said, I’m going to remain an active member and the administration has made it clear that the door is always open for my return, should I change my mind. Right now, though, as weird as this may feel, I’m content with just being a regular old member. Priorities change in life and between Melanie and work, I can no longer confidently say I have the time or motivation needed to be an effective staff member on Neowin.

Filed under: Journal