After a three year span, I've decided to fully depart from the Trackmania scene, including my responsibilities as EQNX manager. It may come as a surprise to some, but others might have seen it long coming due to my recent inactivity. I started working full time about half a year ago, and since then, it's been impossible to give any priority to a scene and community that is mostly EU-centric.
Since 2020, around the time the COVID outbreak began, I decided to pursue my lifelong dream of a career as a musician. I dropped out of college, took up freelancing to make ends meet, and dedicated literally every single day to working my ass off to make my dreams come true. The general global situation - and my personal situation - pretty much forced me to lead a completely secluded life. I was barely seeing any sunlight and my interactions with people were extremely limited. This led me to a depressive stage and led me to overthinking, throwing me into a deeper hole.
It was soon after that I discovered the Trackmania community. Being part of the community led me to making friends, and furthermore eventually pushed me to starting EQNX. The joy I felt as we saw the team grow from a group of largely unknown people to a sizable team that could compete against far more established teams, despite being led by a complete unknown within the scene, is probably one of the most pleasant experiences I've ever had. As embarrassing as this may be to admit, EQNX was my whole life for the last few years. It was priority number 0 for me. The community I built around the team was my home and family, and it was genuinely my safe place.
Unfortunately, these past few months, I started noticing that the community we had worked so hard to build felt like it was degrading little by little. I tried everything I could think of to liven up the place again, but nothing seemed to really work. And eventually, I realized I was just losing grip. The fact that I naturally was placing the team further down my priority list now that I was focusing more on my real life since I entered full time employement, was detrimental for the team. I came to the realization that I wasn't the right person to lead this team anymore. Adding to that, the emotional stress of feeling responsible for the way things were turning out started to put an added emotional stress on me that I genuinely didn't need. As such, I came to the decision of leaving this team in the hands of people I can trust. I believe they are the right people to continue this dream in my stead, and I know they will make an absolute effort with that goal in mind.
I would like to thank every single person in the TM community whose life ever crossed mine. The fact that there were people I could interact with, despite my ungodly sleep schedule, probably contributed to my wellbeing more than I care to admit.
I also thank everyone in the competitive TM scene, in particular the managers who I had the pleasure to ever discuss anything with. I learnt a lot from you and it was a great joy to face off against you during comps, not to mention the banter and shit talking was always entertaining. Thanks for always keeping it friendly and entertaining, it's a joy to be able to call you friends.
And lastly, thanks to everyone who was ever part of EQNX, in particular those who I built truly close relationships with. I owe you my eternal gratitude. As I already said, you are like family to me and I have nothing but love for every single one of you. You were there through some of the darkest moments in my recent life. Thank you for gifting me some absolute ecstatic moments during competitions. Thank you for keeping me busy and distracting me when I was going through my dark patches. Thank you for all the jokes and laughs, and all the fun moments we spent together. And especially, thank your for putting your trust in a random stranger from the internet who you knew nothing about. I still hope I get to meet each one of you in real life one day. Stay in touch.
All that said, this is where I take my exit. Thanks for reading through the large block of text. Maybe see you at a future LAN event! 🫡