My year long journey on ATS.

So today began like any other day.

I walked into the office, got a mug of coffee and sat down at my desk to start doing some exciting QA work!

I log in to ATS and realize that today is my 1 year anniversary of joining the site. A smile formed on my face and my mood was only dampered by the fact that today is my last day of employment.

I am not leaving my company willfully, they are outsourcing my whole QA team to India. I don't want to turn this into a rant about me losing my job, I just found it ironic that my last day of work is the anniversary of the first time I came to ATS.



The first time I ever logged onto ATS was from a computer at work, I do most of my research on my favorite subjects from work. So in a way my work and ATS have always be intertwined, my work has allowed me to do my job and learn at the same time without negatively effecting my performance.

ATS has been very important to me over the last year, I went back and read some of my first posts and realized just how much the intelligent debates and opposite opinions have shaped my outlook on life, politics, spirituality, nearly every subject there is to name.

I used to be very hardcore PCT before I came here. I believed that most of the world elite were more than likely reptilian aliens in man suits, I thought by the end of 2011 that it was very likely that martial law would be declared and we would all be micro chipped (thanks Alex Jones!) and put in giant slave cities, and of course that 9/11 was an inside job.



But I realize now that what I was really paranoid and afraid of was reality and being wrong. I spent so much time concerned about the future that I forgot about the present, I forgot about...well...life! This is why I am very thankful for ATS. Due to the plethora of information that has been presented by some very intelligent researchers, I learned to again think critically.

This is not to say that ATS has not stoked my conspiratorial mind. Another valuable lesson that I have learned on this site is that the most elaborate and sinister conspiracies are either the ones we barely know anything about, are so convoluted and warped that they are impossible to even present a valid theory, or are blatantly obvious and simply accepted (i.e. the industrial war complex, plutocracy, psychological manipulation/exploitation).

ATS is a melting pot of perspectives, ranging from the extreme to the moderate. We have our disagreements we even have our fights and fallacies. But overall I have seen more progress and ideas come out of this site than congress.

All the MSM and government can do is argue, while the people (us) solve the problems that no one with authority listens to.



We are changing the world...but the apathy of the majority and of the authority is like cotton in their ears. We as a society are becoming addicted to our hearing impairment, to argument and pain. We don't want to solve our problems because we get pleasure out of disagreement.



We need to listen, to speak our minds, and see the world we have created for ourselves. We have to look at all the possibilities, we have to accept that things change. And I think we have done a good job of this on this site. As long as we can remain civil and debate without throwing mud at one another, we can be an example of how progress is achieved...by logic, by reason, by understanding and compassion.


(posted many times before probably but IMHO it can never be posted enough)

This site has changed my life, it has made me smile, laugh, yell, and shed tears and I am forever thankful to the creators, the mods, and for the members who put their time and effort into researching and posting threads.

Thank you ATS!

reply to post by Openeye

Happy ATS Birthday. I hope that your unemployment time is short. Keep on keeping on. I've been unemployed for 3 years but things are slowly looking up after all this time. I wish you well.

Well, Happy ATS Anniversary!
I too hope you find another job real soon, or, win the lottery!

Thank you both!

I'm pretty confident I will get another job fairly soon. Much sooner than my 2 year stint of unemployment when people first started to notice the economy was in the crapper. However I might have to go on unemployment for a month, I didn't really want to but I might have to.

HAPPY ATS ANNIVERSARY!

I wish you all the best in finding a new job. I know it isn't easy these days.