So, yes, we are back in the temple now. I expected having to do some refreshing of my memory, getting used to a new forum organization, catching up on some minimal number of changes (many of them social) and getting to know a lot of new people and catching up with old friends.
What I didn’t expect was a big change that happened about a year ago, which affects the structure and traditions that had been firmly established. Some of these traditions need something new to replace them, and no rush decisions are being made. So things are in a state of transition. It’s a lot to take in, but that means everyone is disoriented, not just newly returned old folks.
Also speaking of chaos, they use Discord now. The internet is quite a different place than it was in the late 90s or even 15 years ago. I’ve mostly been ignoring Discord in other contexts since I find it a sort of weird hybrid semi-persistent chatroom with some awful interface choices, and forums are just better for certain kinds of things. (Particularly for catching up with long-running topics.) But now I have sufficient motivation for dealing with it and I’m starting to not be completely lost there. It definitely does have advantages over IRC or AIM chats, but… holy cow does it need a “jump to first post” button somewhere. I don’t want to read an entire 3-year long discussion backwards.
Also I have an album to release. I’m really happy with how it turned out! I just need to spend the time concentrating on writing up the info and then publish it.