RocketmanTan

So...it's been like, three years now since I've posted something here. Looking at my page stats, it looks like views are (expectedly) down, but I'm still pleasantly surprised that people *are* still visiting, favoriting, and even watching me!

Anyways, the reason I'm mentioning this is not in some pathetic, narcissistic sort of woe-is-me thing, but rather to emphasize that this was a factor in me deciding whether I should go back to making public works. So...for those of you that still follow me, I'm probably gonna be back soon.

Life's changed quite a bit in the past three years - especially so since the days of weekly uploads and whatnot in the early 2010s. Those were amazing, interesting times for me, where I learned a lot about art, design, papercrafting, and strangely enough, myself.

However, my life has went in crazy directions since those days. I'm in my (hopefully) final semester at the maritime academy; I've passed my officer's exams, and my priorities in life have thus shifted more to my professional development; papercrafting and graphic design have since been relegated to hobbies of mine, rather than my primary passion as they were in highschool.

At the risk of sounding like some wannabe-sentimental snob, I can't help but think of the end of The Wind Rises, where Mr. Caproni tells Jiro about the "ten years in the sun" - creators reach their peaks within those seven years or so, then soon fade into obscurity as their lives and the external world move on. I feel like those seven years have come and gone, and it's time for me to move on, now that I'm about to leave college and pursue my new career and passion; that being seafaring.

It's strange even typing those words, as for the longest time, during all those years when I would religiously upload and interact on this site, I had thought that graphic design was my true passion. It was an integral part of who I was...and even now, I still feel like it is. And yet...my other passion soon overshadowed that and took priority. It's still hard to come to terms with that, and I guess that's part of why I'm writing this down. It's my way of reconciling a new chapter in my life, and a way of saying thank you to all of you, as small a group as you are, for supporting me and driving me through my time in the sun. I may upload some more designs in the future, or this may be the last you hear of me for quite some time. Whatever the case may be, I just wanted to say to anyone who may be listening: thank you. From the bottom of my heart, thank you for your support, your views, for just being there, downloading and building the models I've shared. You've helped define a major portion of my life - a part of my life that, for all its teenage angst and stress, was a part of my life that I will always cherish and remember. I've made so many loyal fans, wonderful friends, combinations of both...and it is all of you whom I cherish more than anything I have posted on here. If I do decide to post here again, I hope you stick around. If not...thank you, for everything, and I hope to see you guys around.