User:DrippingYellow

Making my userpage to announce my retirement

Alright, time to peel off the band-aid. The reason I've had so many long absences? I was trying to stop working on the wiki to make time for other things that I frankly enjoy doing more. Engaging in discussion/proposals has been an enormous time sink, with me being so scared to say anything that might possibly be untrue that my eyes glaze over as I spend hours trying to look for relevant sources, most of which end up not being of any help to me. I remember I was really hoping not to become a "proposal goblin"; someone who only dropped by to comment on proposals and never actually did anything else to directly help the wiki. Now, I've become exactly that, maybe worse; I obsessively drop by the Mario Wiki only to gaze at the ongoing proposals, neither commenting nor voting, not even looking at articles sometimes.

My time here really has just been another form of the time I'd spend staring at wikis, sometimes for most of the day. It's unhealthy, and worse than that, I can't stop. As someone with autism (brain reveal!), I am naturally prone to doing repetitive, non-adventurous activities for long periods of time, even when I recognize that it's not at all beneficial for the person I hope to become. There's hardly a worse feeling in the world than not wanting to do something but continuing to do it out of habit, especially if it seems trivial to overcome.

The point of it all is: I really should not be here. I don't participate in the community, I'm not helping with the wiki, hours of my life are gone, and I'm feeling dread every time I do decide to vote on something. I'm not going to act like going blind from looking at the Super Mario Wiki is my only obsession or anything (I've given almost as much time to YouTube and video games), but it's one of the ones that has really bothered me as of recently. People sometimes like to joke that maintaining resources on the internet is a waste of time. Those people clearly haven't seen what it's like to actually waste your time: looking at the same few articles over and over again, thinking up arguments that you're never going to use... it's one of many horrible cycles in my life, and I feel like if I cut at least one off now, maybe I can get my life together...

I might not stop looking at wikis entirely, but maybe being transparent about what I do here and publicly leaving will give me closure and help me progress as a freaking person. DrippingYellow (talk) 22:48, October 26, 2024 (EDT)