Time to heal
I’ve realized that I’m just not good at leading a community. Also, I’m not that keen on being in the spotlight myself. I’d rather be just a normal guy in the community, nothing more.
I love to code, and it’s more than enough for me to see that people like and appreciate the things I implement.
Also, I think, with me out of the picture, I hope there might be a chance to heal the community and bring the two parts - the website and the Discord server - together again. I’ll add that this is just my hope! I know that this will be up to the new site team and @Grant_Spiral, who is leading the server now. The server is in good hands with Grant, and I know the two teams (server and site) will talk this out and decide what feels best for them.
This past year has been exceedingly difficult for me. And I’m very well aware that a lot of what happened is simply my own fault.
I need to make a clear cut to be able to start from scratch, to have a chance to enjoy all this again, these sites, and the community that emerged around it.
So where did I fail?
I’ve never been a good leader. Caring way too much about other people’s opinions of me, a profuse amount of empathy, too much sensitivity and a rather short fuse are just not a good combination of character traits for a leader to have.
A good friend and member of the new admin team pointedly stated that you need to be “cold-hearted” to be a good leader. There’s a lot of truth in that.
When I took over GSS from Hugh (aka, @MonsterMash62), I just wanted to build on and expand this place he had created, a place for people to have a good time and enjoy their kinks. And it worked, better than I could ever have hoped.
But I was always a bit uncomfortable in my role as its manager, especially on the Discord server, and it only got worse over the years.
Then, about a year ago, the inevitable happened. It was with the best intentions that I wanted to stand by one of the most sensitive members on Discord against - what I perceived as - unnecessary and exaggerated complaints by a few users. But the discussion went south, and eventually, I lost it and I ended up seriously offending people. Some of them even left the server because of that, including a good friend and staff member.
This hit me hard, I was hurt and frustrated at the same time. I just wanted to leave that mess behind, to shut it all out of my life. So I left the server on an irrational impulse and handed it over to @Nu-and-the-Nus, who then, in turn, gave it to @Grant_Spiral.
Usually, you can just leave a community behind in such a situation, and that’s it. I would be over it in no time and could go on with my life. But in this case, I didn’t have that option. I had to continue to manage GSS.
The following months were hard, I soon came to regret my departure from Discord, I missed the friends I had made on Discord.
Some people were genuinely disappointed in me, I guess, they thought that I had failed the community. Some were just happy to see me fall (out of jealousy?) and used the opportunity to be gleeful publicly.
However, the huge majority was nothing but supportive. I’ve found some amazing friends and received a lot of understanding and love. My most heartfelt thanks to you all!
Those few people who were agitating against me behind my back were still active on GSS. They used my service, and I was forced to be confronted with their presence just by nature of being the site administrator - it made running the site into a recurring reminder of some of my deepest unhappiness from the past year. At the same time, they ghosted me when I’d try to reach out to make amends. I know this is their choice and I try to respect that. But it really took away any chance from me to try to fix the issues we had. And it made me feel taken advantage of - abused and ignored at the same time.
Also, in my naiveté, I was expecting that after some time, people who might happen to miss me, too, would take the initiative to at least try to build a bridge, but that never happened. My attempt to return to the community as “Corin” ended in another total disaster. It seems my crime to the community was so severe that it disqualifies me from any chance of redemption in the eyes of some guys.
All of this has way too much impact on my real-world life by now. So I have no choice but to take a step back from the site. I just don’t want to be seen as “Mr. GaySpiralStories” anymore.
Still, I simply can’t completely abandon these sites I’ve invested more than 7 years in. Besides, it would be extremely difficult to find anyone with the technical know-how and the dedication that would be required for taking over the sites completely.
So I’m just going backstage for now. Much less involved and practically invisible. To be able to forget and be forgotten.
There’s still a bit of hope in me that it might be possible to return everything to the way it used to be.
Martin aka Corin
The lights on the site (so to speak) will remain on, and in Martin’s capable hands. All that will change is that Hugh (aka, MonsterMash62) and I will take on the role of being the site’s stewards for now. And our role will mostly be about organizing our excellent mod team toward handling the day-to-day management of the site and forum! I’m in conversations with the team, and we’re coordinating as we take on aspects of the work that Martin’s been doing for the site this whole time.