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One day, I got ridiculously bored, so I decided to Google "create your own country". Why? It was something that always appealed to me. That was when I first found NationStates.

Monday, April 3rd, 2017, 11:42:35 a.m. EDT: the Kingdom of Eshialand was founded.

How has it been four years? How have I stuck around? Okay, that second one was a trick question. I didn't stick around at all. But why then did I keep coming back?

Hold on, I'm getting ahead of myself here. Let's go back to 2017.

So, on that fateful Monday, I started my NationStates journey. At first when I discovered it, I just had to tell my IRL friends about it. I know, I know, rookie mistake. Oh well, what did I know? I was just a kid back then. Heck, I'm just a kid now...

In the beginning, I never really cared much for on-site communities. The only one I distinctly remember was the Union of Confederate Regions before the sh*t hit the fan there, but a quick look into NSHistory will show that I also spent brief stints in the Invaders (take a moment to consider where this nation is now and savor that bowl of irony soup), Geopolity, and Enadia, not that I remember any people from back then. I always cared more about those issues. I must've nuked Brasilistan three times in 2017. In fact, I still can't bring myself to not nuke Brasilistan when I get that chain in 2021!

Sadly, my interest faded, as it inevitably does whenever I don't have a stable support structure, and eventually, my nations (I had three at this point) all CTE'd later that year.

So that was it, right? Another insignificant player came and left without making any impact on the game. Hahaha, wrong. Why do you think I'm writing this dispatch?

So, it was January 2019, a weird time in my life. Actually, all times of my life are weird when you think about it, but I digress.

One day, for some unholy season, I decided to try and find NationStates again. Why? I dunno, the answer is just lost to time I guess. Somehow though, I managed to remember all of my nations and log into them. Of course, now I was a player without a home, and given that I was just beginning to learn the power of online friendship, this next batch of recruitment TGs could very well have determined the course of my NS existence.

Of course, the TG that I wound up clicking on was for the Order of the Grey Wardens, and the rest, as they say, was history.

Wait, no it wasn't!

So, I wasn't super active there at first. I didn't really have the tools at that point to be that active. So, one day, I decided to spin the recruitment TG wheel again with a new nation, a new co-main. Its name? Galdanulia.

Sunday, April 21st, 2019, 8:14:07 p.m. EDT: the Republic of Galdanulia was founded.

In the end, I decided on the LCRUA. Ah yes, another eternal mystery solved.

While it wasn't very active at the time, and was actually on a steady decline into inactivity, I actually made friends there, which was more than I could say about other regions I had joined. This was also when I was getting into regional politics, so the region was a great fit for me.

Sadly, as the months went on, my activity waned as it always does. However this time, I noticed something. My activity was waning along with the LCRUA's. Did I need a stable, active friend group to keep my interest in NationStates alive?

Spoiler alert: yes. And, once I didn't have an active friend group anymore, I did exactly what I did in 2017: let all of my nations CTE. However this time, I knew it wasn't going to be forever.

Flash forward to the Fall of 2020. Boo-boop. Boo-boop. I had a weird habit of leaving Discord open while I was doing my online learning, and since I was still masked as a Guardian in the TGW Discord server, I kept getting pinged about new missions every day. Day in, day out. Boo-boop. Boo-boop.

One day, I decided that enough was enough, and that day was December 1st. I logged back into my old nations, rejoined my old regions, and promised myself that this time would be the last time. If it didn't work out, I'd leave forever.

One has to wonder how things would be different if TGW had had the common sense to unmask me, or if I had purged my server list even once. History has a way of working out in the strangest ways, however.

Eventually, things went really well for me. I saw how NS was meant to be. TGW was going great for me. The LCRUA got back together, against all odds. I had friends at a time when I needed then most, and in that sense, NS kinda saved my life, or at bare minimum saved me from being some psychotic shell of my former self.

I even found myself joining more regions with more nations, usually because a friend told me about them. My NS communities were multiplying on their own, which I suppose means that I have a life here.

Recently, I even found myself joining the South Pacific, which I never thought I'd do, given my previous stance that the feeders were just "those regions that you're meant to leave". I often find myself looking at my past opinions just like that one and realizing just how wrong/naïve I really was, and this was one of those times, because one I was there, I found a community like no other.

Of course, through it all, I'll always have the friends I've met along the way. Aren't they the best parts of any journey? No matter who you are or what region you're in, I want to thank you for being my friend. Heck, even if you aren't my friend, even if you're just someone who found this dispatch and wanted something to read, I want to thank you for being a part of my ongoing NS experience. This one's for you.