Introductions

[Heather]

Hello @jodi. I am glad you made it here.

**big warm hugs**

Please, make yourself at home. I welcome you here with open arms dear.

Drop by when you can. Post pictures or songs and music. Chit chat with me and the other lovely members of the group.

[Deleted]

Welcome hun

[The Enigma Shew]

Welcome Jason, I hope you find us to be warm and welcoming. If you have any needs please feel free to message me or the other staff. @marti and our owner Heather.

[Deleted]

Welcome Jason if you need anything please let me know or Heather, or The Enigma Shew, know thanks for joining

[~apple~]

Nov 29, 2014 17:35:29 GMT -5 @jason said:

Hey everyone my name is Jason i just sign up and checking you all out some.

hi Jason :)
its nice to see you here, Welcome!

[Heather]

@jason Heeey! I didn't see you there!




Make yourself at home! Grab a seat, chit chat around here when you want!

[Deleted]

@jason, welcome

[Deleted]

@jason, you're welcome

[Heather]

Welcome to @dawnette!
I'm so glad you've stopped by!

Please take a quick moment to go over our rules and then feel free to join in the conversations, fun and sharing.
If you need anything at all, please PM myself, @marti or The Enigma Shew.

[The Enigma Shew]

In der Tat herzlich willkommen auf unserer Website, ich hoffe, Sie genießen Sie Ihre Zeit mit uns.

Indeed welcome to our site, I hope you enjoy your time with us.

[Heather]

Warum sprechen Sie auf Deutsch?

[Deleted]

Hi everyone :)

Just joined and am just looking around a bit right now :) I hope i've found another good place here :) I'm from Holland, Europe. Looking forward to find out more about this place :)

[Heather]

Welcome to our newest member @teddybear8!

Please read through the rules and then feel free to come chat with us. Take care and enjoy your stay here.

If you need anything, feel free to PM me, @marti and The Enigma Shew!

[Deleted]

Thanks Heather :) It looks very nice around here so far. I need some time to look into everything, but that will come :)

[The Enigma Shew]

Dec 2, 2014 10:49:56 GMT -5 Heather said:

Warum sprechen Sie auf Deutsch?

I use google translate for the languages I don't speak but I do speak Hangul, and Farsi, and Mandarin.

[dragonshy]

hi @teddybear8

[~apple~]

Dec 2, 2014 11:09:55 GMT -5 @teddybear8 said:

Hi everyone :)

Just joined and am just looking around a bit right now :) I hope i've found another good place here :) I'm from Holland, Europe. Looking forward to find out more about this place :)

Hello and Welcome! :)

[Deleted]

Ooh love the teddy, Apple !! :)

[Heather]

Dec 2, 2014 11:24:36 GMT -5 The Enigma Shew said:

Dec 2, 2014 10:49:56 GMT -5 Heather said:

Warum sprechen Sie auf Deutsch?

I use google translate for the languages I don't speak but I do speak Hangul, and Farsi, and Mandarin.

Impressive language skills Shew.

I took German for 3 yrs in high school and 2 in college. I hate to say, I've lost most of my ability now that I haven't used it in so long. But I used to be good with it. I think now, it isn't the words that trip me up, it's the grammar where it differs from English that will throw me. I can understand more German than I can actually speak these days.

[Deleted]

Dec 2, 2014 10:20:31 GMT -5 Heather said:

Welcome to @dawnette!
I'm so glad you've stopped by!

Please take a quick moment to go over our rules and then feel free to join in the conversations, fun and sharing.
If you need anything at all, please PM myself, @marti or The Enigma Shew.

Thank you for the kind welcome Heather. I have a big work load towards the weekend, but when things calm down I'll look around more.

[Deleted]

Dec 2, 2014 10:34:39 GMT -5 The Enigma Shew said:

In der Tat herzlich willkommen auf unserer Website, ich hoffe, Sie genießen Sie Ihre Zeit mit uns.

Indeed welcome to our site, I hope you enjoy your time with us.

Du bist kein Deutscher...oder?

[The Enigma Shew]

No Dawn, I am not a German.
I saw you were from around Stuttgart and figured I would try to welcome you in your own language. Sorry if I butchered it.

[Heather]

Take your time @dawnette. We will be here for you when ever you have a little while to spend with us.

[Deleted]

Let me try to write a more decent introduction..

I'm a 51 year old guy from Holland. I live on my own and i live on my own very clearly by choice after some real bad experiences in the past. Generally i'm a pretty laid back person and try to avoid anything negative. I believe very strongly in the power of positive thinking.

There's a lot of things I really like in life. Some of the most important ones... well first of all there's music. I love all sorts of music and i'm very actively involved with music myself. I play several instruments (synthesizer, guitar, bass, piano, some mandolin, some flute, some banjo). Right now i mainly work electronically with virtual synths on the computer cos i don't have a real hardware synth yet. I do have a guitar.

I also love to work with graphics on the computer and am pretty much a photoshop, paint shop pro and bryce3d junkie.

I love nature, making long walks, travelling. I love the winter season and snow.

I am a person that tends to take his time a bit to get to know people, but once i think things are ok i can open up pretty well. I love to try and have good and positive chats with people and i love to help out if i can when someone needs a little support.

One more thing... I collect .. teddybears :) I have gotten some pretty strange reactions from people to that, you know the kind of thing, like "oh how weird, a 51 year old guy collecting teddybears, bla bla etc"... however, i've also gotten very surprised reactions from people who were very surprised in a positive way and actuallly like it a lot

I hope to become more involved with things and people here over the coming time :) It looks like a real nice place here :)

[Deleted]

Oh German language. I can understand and read every word of german :) I grew up only 4 miles from the German border and still live there right now. I can speak and write it too, just am a bit slow with it..

[Heather]

Thank you @teddybear8 for the introduction. That was very nice of you to come back and tell us a little about yourself.

I love getting to know new people. You seem like you will fit right in here with the rest of us. I hope you will find some good friendships and have some good moments talking and interacting with us.

I love the fact that you are involved with music. I find music to be one of the most incredible ways to express yourself. Although, I am not a musician myself, I do enjoy it a lot.

And the teddybear collecting is endearing. I think it is great that you have found something that makes you feel good to surround yourself with. Nothing wrong with that.

No worries about being slow with German language. You've got me beat by light years. I haven't used it in many years so have lost most of the skill to speak it. I can understand most of it still, when written.

Again, welcome to the group! I am glad you've decided to come spend some time with us. Make yourself at home and join in anywhere you would like.

[Deleted]

Hiya Heather :)

What a nice post :) Thank you very much for that :) You know i have been looking around a bit but im gonna need some time to get to know everything here. Thing is this, i'm also active in a couple of other places and have a life besides the computer lol...but i will be here as much as i can :) I am currently selecting those few sites that I fully wanna concentrate my energy on and throw out the rest and I have a feeling this one will be one of the remainders :)

Heather it looks like people talk here about personal things as well...thats a good thing... however, like you I have been around online since the beginning and i have been through some horrible misery with it. One of the reasons i became careful. What surprises me a bit is this...the boards here are open, i mean, non members can read them, right ? Im curious why you chose that concept if you wanna answer :) And btw i love the rules of this site ! :)

Thanks for what you said about the teddybears :) You know there's a nice story behind that...and i could also write some more about the music thing...but eehm...help me out a bit, isn't there a section here where its maybe better to have a get to know eachother chat ?

[Heather]

@teddybear8, there is a thread for this now. link

This is actually my first forum in many years. But The Enigma Shew, who is our security officer here, he has more experience around the forums than I do.

Yes, we do talk about personal issues here. There is a reason for me keeping it open, well 2 reasons. One, so that others who would like to talk about these things, they know they can come and join us- we are not going to be judgmental about your past. We are here for support.

The 2nd reason is personal for me. I was told for the longest time, to not speak about these problems. But keeping quiet about them is part of the reason abuse is still rampant. It's wrong and people should know that it is still going on in the world. If everyone is silent then more children will suffer. I want people to know the signs of that kind of thing.

So, although it is personal- it is also necessary for some topics.
There is a password protected section for me. I can create others for members who request them.

Don't be frightened off by our openness. If you decide you don't want to talk openly, we can talk through PM or in a locked forum for members only. And if talking about personal things, isn't your cup of tea- we have lots of light hearted topics, games and even an RPG area to play someone other than yourself.

I hope you will choose to stick around. I would love to get to know you and hear your stories.

[The Enigma Shew]

The rules are of my crafting from decades of experience. I am glad you like them.

[Deleted]

Very nice post again Heather. Let me first tell tyou that the openess of people here doesn't scare me off for a moment. I am all for a place where it's truly possible to talk open without having to be worried about people disrespecting, trolling and all that crap... it's more of a surprise to find a few places where it's still relatively safe :) I have been through a lot of things with bullying and such and have run several sites myself in the past that were destroyed...i withdrew for a long time to gain new strength and came back and then decided to gather a few people around me that were true friends and who were tired of all the crap everywhere too and created my own safe private place just wit them. Stillhhave that and always will :)

as far as an open site goes...if i think it's safe i am willing to share personal things up to a point...enigma, believe me i gave some experience myself through the years and have very very similar rules on my site :)... there may be some things that i may just share in pm or in a private section...i'll see..

Also, the thing is that i tend to try and help others more and only occasionally vent myself, not cos i dont need it sometimes, but cos i have overcome a lot of things and am more in a position to support others :)

I understand your reasons for wanting to keep it open very well :) And i agree totally as far as abuse goes. It is not a subject to be quiet about.

I will visit that link you gave above soon :)