I am the first to admit that the time I spent on the old forums was time spent as a noob in nearly every regard, but I joined when I was only ten, so my zealous enthusiasm for BIONICLE, the site, and literally any member I thought was cool has an explanation.

When the forums came back, I felt like I'd grown quite a bit in many ways. I still didn't really know what I was doing or what I'd be doing in the future—aren't we all adrift in that regard?—but I felt more confident about my life.

Life is determined by experience, and our culture has decided to bunch many new experiences together in the late teenage years. It makes for a confusing mess.

Added to this aforementioned mess was the downtime. The better part of a year without BZPower made me really come to terms with how important the site had been to me. I'd made and met friends, attended my first BrickFair, and though I'd accepted the possibility of the forums never returning, I came to see the Internet as a whole as a way to interact with those whose interests fell along my own lines. Friends no longer fall along the lines of geographic proximity, but mutual interest and similar personality.

All of which, of course, somehow added to a step up in my own maturity.

Digressions aside, it was refreshing to have BZP back. I didn't do anything that I felt was particularly special from that October onwards, aside from the number of blog reports I sent in (Takuma attests to this), I made no particular attempt to ingratiate myself towards the staff, as I had in my younger and more vulnerable years. (BBC staff circa 2008 probably hated my guts because I'd literally go through every active topic and report every post that was even close to breaking a rule.)

The thing is, I never really wanted to be a part of the staff nearly as much as I wanted to matter to the site, which I ended up attaining during my years as an OBZPC. It was throughout that period that I became known as The Guy Who Never Gets Promoted. It would have been natural for me to feel the same way, but I was happy simply mattering to the site in my contributions. In that sense, I was more "BZP famous" than a good chunk of the lower-level staff of the time.

Three years ago, I was promoted to the now-defunct position of Forum Mentor.

I was excited—who on this site wouldn't be?—but I realized the importance of the position. Yet as time went on I got used to the routine; I was surprised at how much the same everything was. The sense of sameness was, to some extent, my own interpretation. Much of the rest of the staff know each other and are personal friends outside of BZPower, and I never felt it my place to include myself in what they did. I didn't want members to see me as a part of a privileged elite—as if an "elite" can reasonably exist on a web site devoted to a toy line—and so I positioned my official activities on a more personal level.

Little was I to know that other staff members were doing the same thing, and I am happy to see a personal touch as a universal approach to moderation, a change which has only relatively recently become practical with the overall decrease in activity. The "small-town" BZP is in many ways infinitely better than the "big-city" BZP.

I've changed in three years in ways in which I cannot even begin to comprehend. This entry is going to be rambling enough as it is, but I can only end it by thanking everyone on here. The site and its members have unequivocally made me who I am today.

Here's to the many years to come.