fantastic

a more personal view into my resignation:

stepping down is probably one of the best things i've done for my mental health. i burdened myself by putting a lot of work onto my shoulders and having the mindset that i had to get things done and go the extra mile to push SG to something greater. this burden was largely created by myself and myself alone - it's not like i was forced to do it by other directors. when i first was promoted to the board i had a large part in votes and had a general knowledge about what was going on around all the teams, servers, and games. over time as the new forums development stalled i got curious about it and dove head-first into it, and after that i never really left that hole. there was a time where i felt an urge to help JB get back to where it was a few years ago, but having burnt out so much from CS:GO i wasn't of much use there as i imagined. 

with my head in the forums (especially with my background being in cs) i painted myself into a corner mentally. obviously, i was free to do other board-related tasks as i pleased since directors don't have specific duties assigned (we moreso fill as needed), but i had the mindset of "besides some help from TMs + gator, only you have the time and knowledge to do this", and so i dedicated myself to the forums and anything technical. SG has lacked tech talent for the past few years and i wanted to help get technical things out the door. with my dad having cancer for nearly a year before passing away late last fall, the new forums were a welcome escape into the familiar world of web development while still helping SG.

as time went on and requests started coming in for new tech things, i still viewed myself as one of the few people in the community who could help, and so mentally i "assigned" myself to these tasks. again, i understand no one asked me to do it, but from my pov if i didn't do it, who would? and with every passing day i felt that burden increase and increase until my interest in SG started burning out. i started largely associating SG with work, and that's where SG crossed the line from a "fun hobby" to "work". coincidentally, at this time i started venturing into other games (squad, valorant) and had a lot of fun there. i'm the type of guy to stick to a game and get really good at it, and being able to switch from CS:GO into other games was exhilirating. i had just joined a competitive team in squad and was up for promotion as staff at another squad community -- i could feel this was where i wanted to spend the majority of my free time, even though i ended up passing on the promotion to staff.

the key question i was asked was something along the lines of "would you be willing to maintain the code you've wrote?" and my gut feeling was "no". if i can't even bother to maintain my own code, i knew that i could not be bothered to write new code or contribute anything further at that point. and so, after a few weeks of mulling it over and discussing with a few people at SG, i decided to step down. that artificial burden was lifted from my shoulders and i felt like i could breathe again. and a few months after my resignation, i feel like i can freely come back to SG as i please without any responsibilities or obligations . it's nice and refreshing to be able to partake in something freely that you've spent over a thousand hours growing and helping. i went from the kid who zoned out in lectures to debate why T-baiting shouldn't be allowed on TTT to putting work at more of a center stage and hopping on SG whenever it crossed my mind. being a director has truly made me more mature and understand my limits.

how are things now? good. i'm in my last semester, nearly halfway through, and midterms are starting soon. i'm trying a lot of new food but gaining weight as a result so i have to go back to intermittent fasting ):. people from SG still reach out from time to time and i still snap some of the board members to keep in touch. will i ever volunteer to be a staff member at SG again? honestly, it's hard to say. i still feel dismayed that even with so much work poured in, our community's new endeavours (squad, rust) have had significantly less progress than i had envisioned in the long run. nate and silent are killing it with introducing PMC and trying to get the community signed up for CCFN. overall, i think SG is maturing slowly with the flow of new CS:GO players joining the community slowing and existing community members growing up. a foray into a new game needs some really passionate people to push it, otherwise it sits there. i've seen that passion in the squad server managers and hope that it spreads to other servers as well (not to say that the passion isn't there with other servers, i genuinely have largely no idea what's going on with CS:GO and haven't for the past 6 months). i also think that with the community maturing slowly, new players who explore SG will have more motivation to stick around as opposed to being weirded out by inside jokes being spread on the discord and chatbox.

thanks for reading this ramble (:

man of height

Hi, thanks for visiting my page. You can contact me on Discord at fantastic#4315.