Ten long years y'all

[Baloki]

- Moved to Sunnydale after an 'incident' at my old school.
- Died
- Resurrected
- Met a cute guy who turns out to be a werewolf, but you can't have everything right?
- Meet another guy, this time turns out to be a vampire. Decided to go for him instead of the werewolf guy.
- Find out vampire guy isn't really a guy, banish him to a demon dimension (Los Angeles)
- Quit - Mother dies of brain aneurysm
- Sacrifice my life to save fake sister
- Resurrected my night job
- Blew up my high school
- Go to my local university
- Start dating a guy in uniform
- Invent a sister who doesn't exist but does really but doesn't...
- Take up a job flipping burgers
- Start dating again, another vampire guy, when will I learn right?
- A group of nerds try to kill me
- Best friend gets addicted to magic and her girlfriend leaves her
- Collapse hometown into a crater and escape in a school bus.

. . . . .

[Pumpkin]

-Moved x7 or something
-Started high school
-Dated first boyfriend
-Dated second boyfriend
-Dated third boyfriend
-Dropped out of High School
-Became a surrogate and gave birth to twins
-My mom moved to Boston
-Was hospitalized for blood clots
-Went back to High School
-Dropped out of High School
-Was hospitalized for blood clots
-Went back to High School
-Dropped out of High School
-Went back to High School
-Got pregnant with my son
-Dropped out of High School
-Moved to Boston for a year
-Tried to work on crappy relationship
-Got my G.E.D
-Went to college for Sales and Representation
-Got my drivers license
-Ended crappy relationship
-Started current relationship, long distance
-Moved to Boston to get green card
-Moved to South Carolina

[Calliope]

• Moved to America
• Got the sugar
• Got the power
• Got the women

[XxSephirothxX]

I think it's a delicate balance that you have to strike between a career and a life. Where I work it's pretty obvious that a lot of people don't get that. I know a lot of people who work 12 hour days average, often coming in on the weekends. These are people who are married with kids. It kinda makes me sad.

Have you heard the "Four Burners" theory that's in this David Sedaris story? I heard it referenced in an awesome radio podcast called 99% Invisible a few weeks back and it's kinda stuck with me. Not sure I necessarily believe it, but it speaks to the difficulty of finding that balance in your life.

"One burner represents your family, one is your friends, the third is your health, and the fourth is your work.” The gist, she said, was that in order to be successful you have to cut off one of your burners. And in order to be really successful you have to cut off two."

Honestly don't know which burner I'll turn off over the next decade. The alternative, of course, is to have a couple of 'em on low and find a way to be content with that.

Anyway! Ten years ago I was 15, so...

• I joined EoFF halfway through high school, partially to promote my own website and forum that my friends and I created. RIP Spare Limited.
• Made a lot of friends here, transitioning from someone who rarely used the Internet to that kid who hogged the computer all night to hang out on instant messaging and IRC.
• Finished high school, moved out of my crappy home town, and went to the University of Georgia.
• Stuck with EoFF for another couple years, but mostly kept in touch with friends here through other means after around 2008.
• Realized, in hindsight, that I took this place way too seriously, even when I wasn't very interested in posting on the forums. Growin' up.
• Got my heart battered once or twice along the way.
• Graduated with a bachelor's degree in magazine journalism from UGA in 2010.
• Skipped college graduation to vacation in California for three weeks. Spent two weeks on a friend's couch in San Francisco and confirmed that I'd like to live there. Met Neel an hour before going to the airport.
• Flew to LA, spent a couple days with a lifelong friend who was at school at USC. Realized I would never, ever want to live in LA.
• Spent a week hanging out with kikimm in SoCal
• Had no solid job leads after college. Moved with a friend into my grandparents old house in Atlanta, which was a surreal living experience. My family let us pay cheap rent.
• Started writing and blogging about technology for How Stuff Works and a site called Tested, making money as a freelance writer.
• Met rubah in Atlanta!
• Kinda-sorta fulfilled my dream of writin' about videogames for Electronic Gaming Monthly by getting a story about Squaresoft published on 1UP.com in 2011. The site was a shell of its former self, with most of the staff laid off at that point, but it was still a career landmark.
• Met a really great group of friends in Atlanta via another video game forum. Played trivia with them almost every week. Won trivia a lot, even though I'm terrible at it.
• God a job offer at 1UP right when they were bought out by IGN. Had a crisis of self-confidence and wasn't sure I could do the job, and was unsure I wanted to work for IGN.
• Got a raise from Tested and an offer to rent a room in San Francisco at a great price.
• Threw a weekend-long going away party with most of my friends in Georgia.
• The day before I flew out to San Francisco, attended my grandmother's 90th birthday party, at which my entire dad's side of the family was in attendance, as well as most of the family friends I had grown up around. Some of them are musicians, and they sang a couple songs, like Bye Bye Love, which was totally overwhelming and one of the most surreal experiences of my life.
• Moved to San Francisco in September 2011. I've been here writing as a freelancer since then, have made some new friends, and hope to have a salaried job in the next year or two.

That's...a lot! But those are the events that stand out in my mind. That doesn't cover some of my best memories, like staying up till dawn in my troutty college apartment talking with friends, but, you know, enough words.

[Ashi]

Hmmm, I was 17 a decade ago and had just graduated high school and started university. So in the past decade I:

- Overcame shyness
- Became burnt out of MMORPG (I play WoW maybe a couple of times a week for an hour each go)
- Found out I was athletic so got into a lot of sports including figure skating, martial arts, horse riding, etc.
- Found out I enjoyed giving presentations and was able to MC an event at my uni
- Traveled to a few places: England, France, Italy and Germany
- Graduated from Uni
- Worked in a bank for 2 years
- Got my own horse since horse riding is the only sport I stuck out with for 6+ years
- Got into Grad school (and quit my job soon after, it got too stressful to commute to both)
- Got married

Still in Grad school for the moment and enjoying myself lots, even the difficult parts :P

One of my biggest regrets that in those past 10 years I really stopped writing completely when it was a passion of mine when I was younger. But I can't really say it's a regret if I stopped doing it because I didn't feel like writing anymore.

[Mikztsu]

I guess the first half of last 10 years was mostly just failures to me, but then I started to show no leniency towards life.

Not obviously gonna list everything, there's it's almost 1/3 of my life! But highlights, not sure what kind of order I go for:

- I think what originally took me from Eyeson, was the release of FFXI. Too much to do, too little time etc. I played it a lot. No regrets tho, it was fun and have same nostalgic effect to me as this forum when I think about it.
- I tried many jobs, studied some different crap. For me, it was never really easy to find out what to do. Just had to keep busy.
- Dad died to a stroke. This is the absolutely the most awful thing I have ever experienced. Had never before lost anyone so close. Some smurfed up inevitable trout we must endure, but that's life.
- Finally found out what I want to do, became a nurse. First plan was the ambulance, changed my mind. I ended up to neurological ward in city hospital. It was interesting.
- bought my own house I'm very happy with. Could fullfill my inner gamer's wetdream by home theater, where I spend too much time at.
- Not long after that I became a nursing supervisor in a private (3rd) health sector.
- hobbies are still pretty much the same. Only one of them I do regularly is swimming and gaming.
Life is easier now in many different ways, but still weight of responsibility evens it up. There's probably a reason I'm not planning to make babies yet. Cats are just fine for now.

No regrets about anything really, no, although I'm glad I've matured some ( but not too much). Everything has played a delicate part in self-processing for 10 years.

[Shoeberto]

Have you heard the "Four Burners" theory that's in this David Sedaris story? I heard it referenced in an awesome radio podcast called 99% Invisible a few weeks back and it's kinda stuck with me. Not sure I necessarily believe it, but it speaks to the difficulty of finding that balance in your life.

"One burner represents your family, one is your friends, the third is your health, and the fourth is your work.” The gist, she said, was that in order to be successful you have to cut off one of your burners. And in order to be really successful you have to cut off two."

Honestly don't know which burner I'll turn off over the next decade. The alternative, of course, is to have a couple of 'em on low and find a way to be content with that.

That's the first I'd heard of that, but it's a very interesting way to look at things. It seems like there's a lot of truth in that based on my experiences in the past few years.

Flew to LA, spent a couple days with a lifelong friend who was at school at USC. Realized I would never, ever want to live in LA.

lol, I spent a week in LA last year, just wanting to be adventurous. I'm really glad I went and it was a great experience but I would never go back unless I had a damn good reason.

Congrats on all the accomplishments!

[Leeza]

Ten years ago.... 2003. A few ups and downs.

My father died.
Went back to school to help me with my job.
Finished school.
Got divorced.
Bought a new house.
Bought a new car.
I found Sammycat and then Othercat died.
Daughter moved out to Uni and then got married. I was happy for her and sad for me that she was not longer there every day.
Met a new guy.
Still with the new guy after almost 4 years.
Still at the same job that I've had since 2000.

[Burtsplurt]

I was 21 back then.

Since then I...

• Graduated from university
• Discovered that a degree in Marine Biology didn't guarantee a job in the Maldives.
• Moved to Leeds to work with fish.
• Bought my first car. 0-60 in just 16 seconds!
• Stopped working with fish so that I could teach kids Science.
• Had my first proper relationship.
• Ended my first proper relationship.
• Got back into football after a long break.
• Lost my cat of 18 years.

[Shiny]

Shoeberto and Azar bring up really good points.

I find that that the burner thing is true for me and I feel bad because lately I've been turning in to someone I dislike. Working 12 hour days and on the weekends. My health is starting to get worse. That's why come April, I'm going on vacation to some where, anywhere. My health is more important than any job ever will be. I just have to keep telling myself that so I won't burn out. Luckily my friends and family burners are still there though only this past week I haven't really been able to hang with friends.

[Heath]

Christ alive, how have I been a member of this forum for almost half my life?

Let's see... In the past decade:

* Completed my SATS (remember those?)
* Finished high school (to GCSE)
* Finished college and completed the International Baccalaureate (I = snob)
* Went to the University of York via an Oxford rejection - which encapsulates both the best decision I ever made, and also the one thing I'd like another shot at. Go figure.
* Met some people not as famous as Lee Trundle (the Queen, David Cameron, Ed Miliband)
* Doubled the countries I'd visited when I went inter railing for a fortnight (Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, Czech Republic)
* Stood in local elections twice (as a paper candidate, but still racked up over 200 votes each time).
* Embarked on my longest relationship yet (3 years in June) with a girl I had eyes for from the first time we met (still took 9 months for us to get together!)
* Graduated with a 2:I (gutted. Worked like a trojan in 3rd year wanting a First)
* Lost a close friend and housemate to cancer. Speaking at his memorial service was tough.
* Got a place on a ridiculously competitive graduate scheme in a job I enjoy, and where I work now.

[Rebellious Eagle]

10 years ago I was 8, so...
-Grandma passed away
-Best friend moved, we still stay in touch
-Started playing Final Fantasy
-Achieved black belt in taekwondo
-Went to my first concert
-Graduated Catholic school
-Started high school
-Joined EoFF
-Started first relationship, which ended quickly lol
-Struggled with depression, anorexia, anxiety
-Became state champ in the American Taekwondo Association
-Lost cats and got new cats
-Joined winter color guard team
-Went to Germany, Texas, California, Hawaii, and a few other states I'd never been to before
-Got engaged young, still together
-Dyed my hair for the first time (red), now it's blonde
-Got accepted to colleges
-Got my drivers license

and lots of other things I'm sure I'm forgetting!