Hey y'all. Some of you may remember me, some of you may not. I like to think I did well for myself on here, but obviously it's been a while.
I used to be head over heels with Beyblade. Back in 2006, I went to India to visit my extended family for the first time and they introduced me to the latest craze at the time: Beyblade. I was so hooked I could just keep launching my Driger MS, and I knew this was something that I would be playing for the rest of my life.
Four weeks later I left for home and promptly forgot about it. So it goes.
I came back with Metal Fusion. I found out that Beyblade was back and rekindled my love for Beyblade by watching all the old Bakuten Shoot episodes in my room while simultaneously battling my Sea Dragon MS and Driger MS in a plastic plate on a table next to me: to say that my imagination was captured would be woefully understating how much this little game of battling tops caught my interest. The complexity! The mesmerizing rotation! Even the Beyspirit! Talk about scintillating to a thirteen-year-old.
The rest is history: I was trying to identify the parts of my Sea Dragon and stumbled across Beywiki, lurked for a month, and decided what the hell: burning up with questions to ask and brimming with answers from extensively studying HMS, I took the plunge and joined the WBO as surely one of the most knowledgeable members around.
In other words, I was a complete and utter novice. When I was active, it was almost scary to look in my profile sometimes and realize a simple thread I made thinking it would be fun to discuss what your personal special move would be still accrues views to this day as people go through my post and thread history and wonder what this former Advanced Member had to say as a newbie who had just binged the Lazer Collection before joining this site and evidently received some divine inspiration for his first username.
Life got busier but my beyspirit remained strong. I thought up the most unbalanced combo I could make at the time and lo and behold it was actually useful! Then prominent members of the time came and joined the thread discussing the nature of this variant on Defense that developed into "Anti-Attack" while I sat back trying to comprehend a way to contribute. I never really did contribute too much in the theory side in the end, and that's honestly okay. I made my mark in the community, wrote a few Beywiki articles (shoutouts to being the HMS guy and writing that monster of a Diablo Nemesis article) and there wasn't much I could ask for beyond that.
Why am I writing this? I'm sitting in the 7th floor of a library in Cornell University, in between assignments and studying for an exam on Friday. Now I'm a sophomore studying Neurobiology and Behavior with a pre-medicine track and holding a 3.98 GPA, working in a computational physiology laboratory for 10 hours a week while taking 18 credits of classes (including the dreaded Organic Chemistry! It's not that bad after all) and a blue stripe and lightweight sparrer on the school's Taekwondo team, practicing almost every day to get to the goal of med school and a black belt.
Humblebrag aside, I would not be where I am today without Beyblade and this site.
I wrote my common app essay on my love of Beyblade. Ivy League schools were reading a truly one-of-a-kind essay from this random kid who wrote about approaching a children's spinning top game from a more mature angle and how it gave back to my experiences with volunteering and leadership and they enjoyed it!
I enjoyed it too. Stepping up as a tournament organizer for the NYC scene when I could always led to extremely enjoyable experiences. It didn't matter how difficult the members were, how harried I got doing logistics while trying to maintain my precious Beyrank and obtain those maddeningly addictive digital hexagons under my profile, or if I was running a 20-man tournament in negative temperatures under zero cover in Central Park (see: Samurai Showdown).
I loved every second of it.
Seeing the smiles of the kids who would come, and the parents who brought them, validated every fiber of my being. Beyblade helped me learn how to organize events, improvise in case the situation went awry, find new ways time after time to raise the excitement of the event, and act social toward others and really put myself out there to make not only the kids feel welcome, but the parents too. All skills that I utilize to this day and would not have developed to the extent that I have now without Beyblade.
I was fortunate enough to have such good friends that they were accepting of my hobby. Sure, there would be teasing and poking fun at it, but they still supported my hobby in the end. That's definitely not something that people in high school can always say, so I know I can call myself lucky due to that alone.
My beyspirit is out now though. I leave this post more as a swan song: I won't forget the amount of time and memories I have with Beyblade and the memories I cherish as a result, and how much it shaped my development during a critical point in time. I got nostalgic recently and decided to visit the site to see how it's been doing, and it's as strong as ever! Y'all are incredible. I realized that I never properly said goodbye, so this is it.
Never be ashamed of this hobby: if one acts in the pursuit of something they love, what a shame it is to squander any chance one could have to further their intimacy with it. If Beyblade is an integral part of you right now as a person, then it is an integral part: hiding it due to shame is a disservice only to yourself.
My Driger MS is sitting comfortably in my backpack. This is Ga', signing off.
"In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little, yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face, is that in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so. But there are times when a critic truly risks something, and that is in the discovery and defense of the new. The world is often unkind to new talent, new creations. The new needs friends. Last night, I experienced something new: an extraordinary meal from a singularly unexpected source. To say that both the meal and its maker have challenged my preconceptions about fine cooking is a gross understatement. They have rocked me to my core. In the past, I have made no secret of my disdain for Chef Gusteau's famous motto, "Anyone can cook." But I realize, only now do I truly understand what he meant. Not everyone can become a great artist; but a great artist can come from anywhere."
-Anton Ego/Peter O'Toole (1932-2013)
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You´ve been so ever-present here ever since I´ve joined that you will really leave a void now. 
Thank you so much for everything you´ve done, especially moderating the YC forum!
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