User blog:Weirdbird/About me

So I have been part of online communities for a long time, in fact my best friends of the last 15+ years were made on a fan site online that started meeting up in person. For most people I have found that there is often a time and season of someone’s life when an online community becomes a focus. Often current circumstances mean that they are isolated and an online community gives them a group. For me it first occurred after the birth of my first child when I became self employed and so was either working at home on my own or on my own looking after a baby. For many of the friends I made they had similar changes, either through Ill health, moving to a new area, unemployment, a disability, recent retirement. I made friends with people from vastly differing backgrounds, age groups and interests. I ended up helping to run the community, organising get togethers, creating virtual webpages of the events so that those online could still participate, I feel incredibly blessed to have become part of that group who have supported each other and remained friends away from our original online meeting point years after we moved away from the online forum. I joined this wiki originally purely to ask questions about the game, but stayed because of the other members and how friendly they were. When I first started this game it was to while away time while we were in hospital with my son following a bad accident, then once we came home, it became something enjoyable and that had achievements that I could reach when I spent all of my days sorting out medical issues and had stopped working. It gave me something to think about, and gave me a new community of people to talk to when I found myself very isolated again. Anyway this is just my musings about online groups, what they can mean to people and why they can be so amazing.