My Resignation.

It is time that I resign as Administrator. When this post goes up, I will be heading into my last two days as an Admin. There are many reasons for this, which I feel I should share, but I want you to be aware that this was not a decision I took lightly, and I would not have made this choice if I felt it wasn't necessary for both me, and the community itself.

Before I start though, I am going to indulge myself a little bit and discuss how this all started for me. I originally joined the New Blood staffing team on the 8th of April, 2016. Approximately 1 month later, I found myself as part of the first Admin team of New Blood, as an Executive working with the founder of NB, yorkiebarz (Thank you for originally giving me the opportunity). By the end of that July, I was Admin. Slowly but surely, others were brought up to fill out the rest of the Admin team, until yorkie had to step back and focus on university life, at which point I found myself in the situation of being one of two (alongside Alice912) people in charge of steering this ship and hoping it wouldn't sink. This continued until it was my time to head off to uni. At this point, I tried to find a balance between real life and New Blood, a struggle that continued until Mid April 2018, at which point a very smart individual noticed my struggle and suggested I reconsider my priorities. After some thought, I realised they were right and had to resign. I was never great with what I deemed goodbyes, so I sorta slipped out the backdoor and handed the reigns back over to those who were better suited at the time to lead the server. 

I never planned on returning to New Blood, in total honesty. I felt like the community had very much moved on from me and so I wanted it to continue on that route. So I never really played New Blood. 

Until a certain worldwide health situation brought me back, mostly out of curiosity as to how the community I left was doing years later. It was never really meant to be a permanent return. But eventually I got caught up in everything, and the community welcomed me back, reminding me of just how much I had missed the place. Eventually, I decided I wanted to return to serving the community again, although I had not quite expected to go as far up the ladder as I did. Eventually however, circumstances required that some people step up to try and continue pushing the server in a better direction, and I (and two way better individuals) answered the call. We had some disagreements, and some agreements, but overall as a team I felt we had a diverse group that best represented the community. 

Eventually, the other individuals who made up the Admin team left, or stepped back, from the Admin duties. We brought up Toby, who was very vocal and has always tried to listen and respond to the community as much as possible. Toby is an extremely capable individual, and I believe that as long as the rest of the staff team, as well as you, the community, support him then the server will continue it's growth. However I am no longer going to be part of that growth.

In early September, I officially started my PhD studies. Since then, my time has been taken up more and more by my research and other work. When I finished working for the day, I found myself lacking any motivation to actually return to the Server and deal with the duties required from me as an Admin. I was burning out. I tried to push through, but I feel that you as a community have been well aware that I've lost the passion I once had for New Blood. 

It's hard to feel invigorated when I wake up every day to messages about 'Player X did this' and 'Player Y did that'. It was annoying being woken up by a Ping that could have gone to any other staff member to deal with but instead was sent to me. It was extremely demotivational to be doing the best that I could for the server whilst balancing my own personal life and mental health and yet still finding that players would treat the Admin and Development team as though we were being paid to work on the server when in actuality we do what we do out of the kindness of our hearts. 

But more importantly than all of that, I don't think I represent the community anymore. I don't think it's fair for this community to be partially spearheaded by me when I have many differing opinions to the majority of the community as it is now. The community deserves an Admin team that believes in the work and the updates it is pushing out, and more and more recently I have lacked that belief. Take Revive, where I still have the stance that to me it makes logical sense you have to buy a potion to store it, and then use a command to use it, instead of potions automatically appearing in your inventory and having to pay to use it out of your inventory. How was it fair that I pushed it through on my opinion of how it should work when the community made it clear that they felt otherwise. The community deserves an admin team that listens to them and represents them. I am not that anymore.

I hope you understand my decision. As I mentioned at the start, I will remain Admin until the end of day Friday (British time obvs). I thank you all for having put up with me for the 1297 days I have spent as staff over the years, of which 1209 will have been as part of the Admin team. Part of the reason for waiting till Friday is that it will mark the 500th day of me being part of the Admin team this second time around, but also to provide a short period should any pressing issues still require my input. 

I and Toby have spoken about this before, and I feel from our discussion that the community remains in very capable hands and that Toby has a plan for the continued progression of both game and Community.

I wish the best for everyone who has been a part of my time here,
Ethan.

"There is always more after the ending. Always the next morning, and the next. Always changes, losses and gains. Always one step after the other... Every ending is an arbitrary one. Everything ending is from another angle, not really an ending." ~ Ann Leckie