Holy balls indeed you are back! I was wondering what happened! I don't know if I should apologize or not (for what happened to you) cause I feel bad that you got banned but like you said, it was your own fault. But I'm glad you're back. More pictures!! :3

As for me...to hectic. I wouldn't know where to begin.
And as for the whole God thing, no worries on it. One of the things I believe is that if there was indeed a God, then He wouldn't mind what you'd think and in the end He would be fine with whatever we choose to believe in. Or something like that.

--
i see the fire burning in your eyes
it melts away the ice in my heart
lift away, cloud of darkness
set me into a realm of your warmth
hide me in the folds of your clothes
and keep me safe until this all blows over.

Hehe yep if a god created us and gave us faculties for questioning things and made his own holy book in such a way that science ends up drawing different conclusions for such basic things as how the world was formed and how we arrived at human life and intelligence, then he can't exactly hold us responsible for calling BS on the whole thing! It seems to me that human life isn't any different from that of animals or even cells, so at the very least the christian way of looking at things is wrong. Most likely all the other spiritual ideas in the world are a load of bull too. It would be awesome if there were some large circle of spiritual life like in Hinduism/Buddhism and such.. I just don't see that as being very likely! Still, if all there is to life is the physical then at least when you die, you won't be around to be upset that you're dead!

I still have photos from like 2006 that I never got round to processing and uploading, so I spose there is at least potential for a few more being uploaded even if I don't take more anytime soon Don't think there will be anything particularly special though..

I could always go have a look at some of your blogs to catch up, I think I saw one or two even when I was banned - you are into roleplaying conventions and stuff like that, right?

duuuuudeeee, you're back!!! I wondered what happened...I figured you must be busy with work, didn't know you got banned...

I'm sorry about what happened...but we Malays here have a saying: "Kalau dah jodoh, tak kemana" meaning "If a man and a woman is meant to be together, nothing can break them apart".

Oh my gosh. Kermon! Wow. I can't believe you're back. O_o

Haha, it's funny how your world so revolved around Christianity and yet we never mentioned it to one another. (I'm a huge athiest, so that would have been awkward.) I'm not sure if you remember me. Been a long time. I wondered what happened to you when you got banned. Well, now I know! We used to comment on each others' work n' whatnot. Glad to see you back. :3

*hug* I'm sorry about everything that happened to you. Actually, my breakup with my ex like.. 5 years ago was pretty bad. We went out for 3 years, and I loved him so much (Well, as much as a teenager can love someone. Because really, I was just so young. I was.. 15-18 when we went out if I remember correctly..). Then, he started getting really angry with me all the time. (Well, honestly, during the entire relationship, we never actually fought. No matter what went down or even if it was me bringing up something that he was doing- I'd always just crumble and kowtow to him. Beg for forgiveness. After a while, even though he was a good guy, he just got used to that.) And lo and behold, after 6 months to a year of our relationship declining, he broke up with me. It absolutely shattered me. I was broken in so many pieces that I never thought I'd ever be able to pick them up again.

But hey, you pick up from that. You learn to accept what happened. He was horrible to me during our breakup. Which is understandable, though, since in a breakup, you can't help but to be angry and vindictive. No matter what you feel for someone, it's so hard to really be the "good guy". He wanted to make me jealous when I tried to mark my own independence, snapped at me, made lewd comments in front of me. (Lewd but not aimed at me. Which was hard to hear for obvious reasons. Because when we went out, he never talked about other girls in that way. But when one night, my friend makes a comment about his ex and how she was a great hugger because of her .. enormous chest. And my ex was like, "Heck yeah, I bet she was!" Not a big deal, but it was to me.)

That night, he actually broke off our friendship because he couldn't handle my heartbroken self anymore. e__e A week later, he comes back wanting to be friends again with unkind words about my friend Jon, whom I had been spending every waking hour with. Well, you can see how this is going. Anyhow. He wanted me back after a while. I admit that it's partially my fault because I kept asking him why we couldn't be together anymore. Yeahh. I honestly didn't know that I didn't want to be with him anymore until he actually agreed that we should be together. Then, when I needed time to think, he blamed Jon for everything and made fun of him when he declared his love for me.

Which, I'll admit, was a little silly. But I'm the first girl that Jon has ever felt that way about, so to him, his infatuation with me was love. But hey. Whatever. Jon and I are actually together now. (Almost 5 years now. Going to get engaged and married when we have the money together.)

The whole situation was pretty bad. Shaun chasing me around, changing drastically and becoming the boyfriend material that I had always dreamed of. Jon, imperfect, and absolutely not what I thought I'd end up with, helping me through everything until finally, I completely fall for him. But just remember this. Even though Shaun did come back to me.. Even though he suddenly wanted me back and became everything I ever wanted, I didn't want to be a part of that anymore. Despite him offering what I thought I wanted, I realised that I deserve more than someone who would break up with me just because he got freaked out about the direction of our relationship. He would have eventually taken me for granted again. People don't change. I fell out of love with him when he broke my heart. (Multiple times.)

Your breakup was tough, but you guys broke up. Obviously, there was something wrong there. I'm glad you found others who could make you happy. You deserve that much. :3 And hey, I know that this sounds funny from a diehard athiest, but.. I hope you didn't give up on your faith because you were angry with it. For a lot of people, their belief system is what defines them. I’m happy for you if you’ve realised that you don’t need it to be happy. But if you go through a time when you are without it and then go back to it, you’ll feel regret forever about leaving it in the first place. Well, what I’m saying is that in either path you take, you must be strong about it. One or the other. Make your decision about religion when you’re at peace and not in a state of fury.

:3

I’m so pleased that you’re happy, though. It’s been a long time!

--
-- With love,
Mei

Kiss me, hold me, love me, adore me.

It's so good to have you back here again Alistair & good to hear that you've sorted yourself out now
Left here myself for a few months & i realised i'd lost intrest in my photography (mind you, think that was more to do with my new camera that i fell out with). Got a lot done but missed the place
Shame you missed all those 'chances' with your new baby... i'm sure you'll make up for lost time though

--
Helen
-------

Give freely & you will reap the rewards

I'm actually in an astronomy class now so I get what's going on "out there". I like to think that ghosts exist. Though I'm not quite sure how that would work. I heard scientists did a study where they measured the weight of a dead body before it was cremated and then after. Turns out that after it weighed less. Scientifically speaking, that shouldn't be possible since all gases, etc were removed before hand.

GO POST. It shouldn't matter how old something is as long as you've still got it, post it. Let the world be in awe of your work. No matter how crappy it could be

And you got me. I'm currently in a D&D group! XD I also plan on going to Acen as Vivi (FF9) and maybe Yumiko Readman (Read Or Die).

--
i see the fire burning in your eyes
it melts away the ice in my heart
lift away, cloud of darkness
set me into a realm of your warmth
hide me in the folds of your clothes
and keep me safe until this all blows over.

Hey yeah I remember you, you were one of my first watchers I was reading your last journal a couple of days ago but it was getting rather late and it was a loooooong journal so I only got about halfway through lol

Yeah my beliefs were an integral part of the direction my life took, and I wouldn't say I'm happier overall without them exactly (in some ways I'm much happier since I felt so restricted in church, but at the same time going from believing in the existence of the soul to feeling there is no eternal existence makes the world seem a little hollow at times), as it's sad feeling that there isn't really any rhyme or reason to life, but at the same time I don't want to lie to myself. I likewise wouldn't want anyone else to lose their faith. Anger at Katie and even God perhaps helped me to get into the right frame of mind for doubting, but it wasn't just emotion, there was stuff to do with me realising that evolution was a valid theory and it caused me to doubt the bible and look at it in a whole different light (sure some people believe the two aren't contradictory, but if you believe in evolution it makes spirituality so much more complicated unless you believe that all living things have a spiritual element etc.. I doubt many people believe that an individual cell has any meaningful spiritual life though, so why is it different when a whole bunch of them get together..). I tried to go back to church for my last girlfriend but it all just sounds so absurd to me now, when you look at religion as a man made thing you can easily see how it's all fake and doesn't really work logically. Sure there's more to life than logic, but Christianity at least just seems made up to me now. The more I listened in church the more I could see that the church is exactly the same as any other organisation, and that god is not there helping it along. I don't like to see people devoting their life to a lie. It's nice that it's making them happy, but at the same time it's all rather sad!

Yeah I used to get annoyed at the way Katie acted a *lot* and I felt awful about it for months. In a weird way I didn't like to think anything bad of her even at the same time as kind of hating her for leaving, but yeah after going out with other girls I realise that Katie was indeed just a rather strange specimen, and if she did love me she wasn't able to show it like other people do. I think I've actually become a much better guy since then too (I know you say people don't change, but I was going through a lot of depression back then which did change how I acted, and I really do think about a lot of things differently as can be seen from me being able to stop believing in God going out with and breaking up with Katie made me aware of a lot of my faults for the first time ever too since she was my first girlfriend), I'm able to consider things much more from other's point of view and with my last gf I was trying really hard not to be lazy and complacent (I lost a lot of motivation with Katie for a few different reasons, mostly through her apparently lack of appreciation for anything I did and her lack of interest in basic stuff like making out (which made me feel like I was just really shallow wanting to be with her physically, but seriously after like 1.5 years of a long distance relationship I wanted to be close to her so much - not even talking about sex, I was happy with just like hugging and kissing but she only did that stuff because I wanted, she wasn't bothered - I thought maybe just all girls were like that, but they're *really* not hehe ), and only once did she apologise to me, ever, I had to feel like I was the one screwing up all the time). Anyway, I basically have no non-Christian friends now so there's not much chance of me going out with anyone else anytime soon, I just need to relax about all that stuff lol

I'm really glad to hear about you and Jon, I remember you talking about him a lot in your journals and it's awesome news! :3

Indeed, having others to share your work with and be inspired by really helps to keep you going I think I got a bit like that after Timtam stopped uploading photos, don't know what happened to him! I'd stopped taking so many photos towards the end of my time at dA before anyway since a lot of my time was taken up at work and spending time with Katie. And these days I've got so much other stuff I think about doing but simply never make the time for - like writing songs and joining a band again etc.. hard to remember to organise time for it all since when I get home in the evenings I usually have some DVDs or computer game taking up my time (have a stupid amount of DVDs sitting next to the TV that I've been trying to work through, and several piles of books on my desk!), but at least I now know that if I do take photos I'll have somewhere to share them.. that will make a big difference I'm sure

I was considering going back to my old camera too since it's a lot smaller - I could just stow it away in my big jacket pockets ready for action, that's what I used to do. Then if I successfully get back into photography mode I could keep my SLR handy in the glove compartment of my car or something for times when I need better quality.