Just thinking.. what a journey it has been for me here, in the tiny buddha forums- ever since May 2015.. Wait, it just occurred to me: this month is the ELEVEN YEAR ANNIVERSARY of my participation here, in these forums.

I deleted my account for 6 months and then came back, so overall- daily participation, posting 7 days per week, often hours per day, for a net of 10.5 years.

There were times the forums were busy, but it’s been very, very slow lately: only 1 post submitted yesterday (other than mine), only 2 today.

I used to think that the tiny buddha website must not be popular considering how slow it’s in the forums (my ignorance), but I learned that the huge website activity is on social media like Twitters or Facebook through feeds, and hardly anyone visits the website itself.

So, mostly everyone who comes across tiny buddha blogs, quotes, adds, etc. (on social media) doesn’t even know that the tiny buddha forums exist.

These forums worked for me because of the slow pace: I was able to have 1 to 1 conversation with thousands of people over the years, people from all over the world (from every continent other than Antarctica). There were conversations that lasted for years.

Recently, I analyzed my own responses to members over time and realized how corrective- directive- didactic I have been, taking on the interpreter authority, telling people what motivates them, what drives them, submitting analytical essays on people as if they were case studies in an academic study, not even being aware what I was doing.

I was trying to make sense of my lifetime troubling real- life experience by analyzing others.

I projected my experience with my mother into others, and I was not even aware that when I was talking to members in the forums, I was really talking to my younger self, trying to protect her and confront my mother.

More later.

* If anyone is reading this (and there might be no one), please let me know.

Anita