Seven years.

[Arch0wl]

I just found out that my account recently turned seven years old.

To the best of my knowledge, I haven't had an account that old on any other website.

When you're a teen and preteen, you lust for a new identity. Your screen name is sort of an escape from your mundane life with your parents. I created the name "ArchOwl" when I was eleven, and added the 0 when I was twelve. This name is almost as old as my second pet.

I'm twenty-one years-old now. I can drive, I can drink, and I can go to war if I want to. It's hard to believe that when I first joined this website I was barely fourteen. I've had this account for almost the entirety of my teenage years, and going on here is going back in time. You're slipping on the clothes you wore for your first school dance.

When I'm anywhere else, I feel like a young man--FFR makes me feel boyish and nostalgic. The website barely looks any different; we're still using the same comforting-yet-boring blue theme as we were seven years ago. Ananana is still chatting, The Garbage Bin is still annoying, jewpin is still quirky, and I can still go and play my crappy Revolutionary Etude chart.

For all that things seem to change rapidly, for all that you think stressing how different you were six months ago and it's eight months since that picture has been taken, the reality is we don't change as much as we think we do. Being able to travel back in time this way has made that clear to me.