Newgrounds has been a big part of my life. In the mid-late 2000s, discovering this site empowered me to follow my creative inspiration no matter how completely inept I was. I had this vague idea of creating music that connected with someone somewhere, and seeing creators on here and the feedback they accrued had this magical effect on me. I wanted desperately to be a part of this fucking crazy magic, so I made metric shit-tons of awfully mixed, strangely composed music. I didn't really... know anything about how people actually did those things- mixing, composing. I didn't even really know what genre of music to make.

I just wanted to make shit, so I made shit. And I had a blast.

At first, I was completely oblivious to just how poorly conceived and executed it all was... I was like a caveman, just building on my own experience of creating; too stubborn to take any classes or learn by any conventional means. Yet... I did somehow progress. I slowly began to mold together some semblance of structure, tried new things, and even approached the concept of ratcheting together a cogent aesthetic now and again.

After this awakening, I never stopped creating.

Some years down the line, I stopped logging onto Newgrounds. I think I felt, at some point, that I had grown out of it, or that I hadn't really been getting enough out of it anymore. Music was no longer the central focus of my creativity, and the site itself had never exactly garnered me a following (not that I deserved one), anyway. So, I let it go. Every once in awhile I'd log back in. Take a casual look around. Maybe even entertain the notion that I would start submitting again, but I never would. I was engrossed in new projects. Nowadays, I've found myself much more inclined to writing fiction than I am toward composing and recording music. I have an artistic partner with whom I'm working on a project right now which inspired this very post. It's a graphic novel that'll take place in the late 2000's... and when I think of that time in my life, I think of Newgrounds.

Working on that project brought me back here. I fucking love this place, man. It means the world to me. When I get my paycheck tomorrow, I'm going to become a supporter. Tom Fulp and the gang deserve much more than my 2.99-a-month for providing so many people a place to share their creative voices. Once I've become successful by my creativity, I will not shy away from citing this strange, exciting, unfiltered, and simply special place as one of my greatest means of inspiration.

P.S. If at any point in the foreseeable future you come across a series of graphic novels about an unassuming 00's-era scene kid who gets roped into being a magical girl and fighting a metaphysical proxy war, I probably wrote it.