It's been a while, 5 years to be a little more precise.

If anyone remembers me, my username was originally DecadeStudios, then just Decade. 

DIY ethics have become one of the biggest parts of my personal identity, and though DIY has taken a much different form in my life, newgrounds is the reason I have those morals. I still take a lot of pride in newgrounds, and identify with it as an important part of my life (however little I've been around for the past few years). 

In 2012 I graduated from highschool where I was pretty miserable and started college at CU Denver. Originally I was a business major aiming to emphasize in business ethics to try to create honest business structures that worked on more of a collective mentality. I quickly realized majoring in business was stupid and switched to film. I wanted to do something with art but also wanted to do something where I got to work with people and collaborate. At the time I felt like art was something that would end up with me being alone in a room for the rest of my life, and wanted to create art with other people. However the actualities of the film industry often make me want to be alone in a room again.

Anyway during this first semester I met a lot of people who I connected with more than anyone in highschool. It was pretty fucking sweet. I finally met people who were into punk rock, which was something that had always been important to me that I people around me in highschool never really understood. I felt like up to this point I felt that there was a lot wrong with me rather than the truth, which was that I just hadn't met the people who I was supposed to yet. This is something I can't stress enough to highschoolers who hate that shit. Theres a ton of fucking people in this world, and a lot that hold the same things close to there chest as you do. And a lot of the times, you gotta go find that shit yourself and put your insecurities out there to connect with find them.

Anyway during this first semester I was living in the dorms. Got into a complicated situation with the school, someone blamed me for something I had nothing to do with and for a few months I thought I was going to be expelled. And this really fucked me up. It was as if I had finally found out that I was an actual person and was super excited about my life and I thought I was going to get expelled and spend the next few years working at a safeway to pay off the rest of my lease at the dorms and my newly found student loans. It sucked. Super fucking bad. They decided to put me on probation and if I got more than a noise complaint I would be expelled. That night my roommates got a noise complaint while I was gone, and the school was nice enough to let that one go so I decided to move out. During winter break I spent that month sitting alone in the empty dorm building scared about moving out on my own into the city and decided I had to make a step and find something new.

When I was growing up, I always connected with punk music and made it out to shows when I could. But living out of the way, didn't have a whole lot of oppurtunity especially when trying to find people to go with me. There was this space called the Blastomat, which I had always wanted to go to because a lot of the DIY bands would play there. It eventually became seventh circle music collective. During this time alone in the dorms one of my newly made friends put me in contact with the guy who ran it and I asked if I could come down and take pictures for them or contribute in anyway that I could. He was stoked and he told me to come down that night, which I was suprised at the time to get a response at all. Being new to the city and not expiriencing a whole lot outside of the dorms it was sort of intimidating but the idea that I would spend the rest of my life working in a safeway or feeling as confused and scared to reach out and do the things that I wanted to pushed me to drive out that night.

Since then I have spent the last three years helping run a non-profit show space that goes out of it's way for artists without expecting anything in return. All the ideas and ethics I had collected from newgrounds and doing my own work had finally taken a very real form. Like I could walk up and touch it. It was cool as fuck. DIY punk (which I had always been in love with) was a real thing, and it made so much sense to me. It was like a newgrounds that I could reach out and touch, and throw razor blades into the industrial ceiling fan of.

To this day I identify with newgrounds. Newgrounds is part of of who I am, and the things that I created on here and the attention they got were really reaffirming when I wasn't very happy with my life. I have been meaning to write a long sappy post like this for a while, but Newgrounds is one of the most improtant things that ever happened to me and helped shape me into who I am now.

So looking back at those three years, a lot of bullshit happened. But I did a lot of cool things. And it all started with me just reaching out to someone and trying to convince them to let me into punk rock shows for free because I had a camera. 

And I've done some stupid shit as well. But, the last few years have been pretty fucking cool and I needed that time away to kind of expirience things and be all social and drink malt liquor in decaying victorian houses and shit. 

I'm going to take next semester off and try to focus on graphic design and delving into the indie game sphere and hopefully contributing here a whole bunch more.

TLDR: I went to college, I run punk shows and shit. Shit sucks sometimes, right? Newgroudns is really cool and really important to me. I love you Tom Fulp, thanks for the tablet. Sorry I haven't done a whole lot here for a while.

So if you want to collaborate or whatever hit me up.

Also if you live in Denver and want to come to some sweet punk shows check us out. https://www.facebook.com/SeventhCircleMusicCollective/ lots of cool shit happening there.

I'm not going to reread this, it's probably lame anyway.

Also most vlogging is lame as fuck, even the animated ones. But Technical Dave is incredible and one of the freshest things around. If you are him or know him tell him to be friends with me.

-Perry