Hi. It's been a while Although I've been pretty removed from Scratch I am still a sentimental person and I couldn't let today pass by without sharing something. Let me ramble some cause it's important to me and I don't get to do it much anymore :) Ten years ago, I created my first account here. Even though I've been gone lately, Scratch really was a huge part of my life from 2015-2018, and for that period of time hardly a day went by where I wasn't around. I think I've said it before, but Scratch was sort of my first exposure to the internet as a place, you know with people on it. It became a spot to connect with people and express myself as I grew up and things were harder in the outside world. I never got into social medias, and now that I'm older and out of school and college I really miss having a space to be with peers. Scratch was always my place to pour my thoughts, hopes, ideas, feelings, nonsense into the void (kinda like what I'm doing right now) and occasionally someone would call back. I know how this might sound, I know Scratch is just a website for introducing kids to basic programming. I'm sure for a lot of people it doesn't mean anything and they found value in other things. But I sure didn't care about being cringe when I was 12 and I don't care in this moment. I look back at the time I spent here and it makes me happy, it feels special. I'm genuinely grateful I got to experience the things I did. I think if I have any regrets it's that I didn't spend more time here when I was younger. So even though this project doesn't really accomplish much and I'm effectively dead on this site now, having my first account turn ten years old still means something and gives me an excuse to reminisce and feel happy. That being said, if anyone is around, thanks for being here. I'm sorry I haven't been, but who knows maybe I'll finally do something at some point (someday). Now I'm going to retell my whole story for maybe the last time, but if you're actually reading this you're absolutely free to go find something else to do with your time. See you guys in another 10 years On January 15th, 2015, I was nearly 12 years old and in sixth grade. I was in some sort of 'technology' class. It was basically shop but it wasn't called that and I guess we must have also had computer stuff because we were in a computer lab one of the days where we made accounts on here. I started with , named after my pet guinea pig, Peanut. I don't remember if I came up with it in that moment or if I had somehow used it before. I did a few of the tutorial projects (do those still exist?) and then proceeded to not touch Scratch for basically half a year. We had an old family desktop computer, but I never really used it and so the first time I really started using Scratch properly was while visiting my grandparents in the summer of 2015. I don't remember what caused me to remember Scratch really, but around this time I explored the home page and experimented with making things tick. I also got my brother and cousin to join. That fall was around the time the schools started letting students take the school laptops home, so I continued using Scratch. In March of 2016 I made the account and would eventually permanently move there. As I said earlier, for this period of a few years I got really into Scratch. I would say it all culminated at the beginning of 2018 when I got to be a front page curator, at the time that really was the coolest thing. That was also the year 3.0 came out I think, and I also got super into posting on the discussion forums. Then in August (I think) one of my projects got featured. 2018 was a crazy year! Maybe in late 2019 things started to get slower for me, and I've had a couple spurts of activity since, but it's never been the same. This is really because of growing up, becoming more involved in other things, and having more of social life again though really. I thought the whole 2020 thing would get me more back into Scratch than it did, but I got a job and then the next year I was suddenly off to college. I was just looking at my projects to see what happened that year and I saw my five years project - how cute! Anyways I think I've made my point mostly. I really can't believe that a whole entire decade has gone by. It really doesn't feel like it now and it's kinda scary how much time can pass when you're not looking. I'm about to turn 22 and I have a real job now, I promise you I'd love to go back to doing nothing but Scratch! At this point I don't think I'll be making a 20 year project or anything, but I'll still be around a little longer, so maybe you'll see something on the main account later this year. But yeah wow 10 years really is crazy. Thanks for sticking around if you have! Like I said earlier this may be screaming into the void, but I think it's good for me.
