A Dragon's timeline

I'm not sure why I have chosen to do this, but, despite having some second thoughts about the privacy aspect of this, something tells me it's important to do so.

It's been a few decades since first entering this community, and Otherkin.net was my first interaction with it. I still remember how happy it made me to find others from my country and how convenient and grateful I was for the fact you could put in an email adres or something to get in touch with another 'Kin.

A lot has happened since then, and a lot has been lost to the internet. But I have decided to recreate my personal online presence in the hopes that if someone I've lost since then, can find me again.

October 2005: Awakening
June 2006: Creation of my original Otherkin.net account under the name Shaza. I immediately started sending emails to the clawful of Dutch and Belgium members on the website.
August 2006: Creation of my LiveJournal account (Otherkin-shaza.livejournal.com)
Creation of a Freewebs website that hosted my Dragonkin experiences and memories called “To Our Real World” (http://www.freewebs.com/theotherkinworld/)
The first physical meeting happened between Dutch and Belgium Otherkin before school started again.
October 2006: Creation of the 'World of Otherkin' forum to bring together more Dutch and Belgium Otherkin. (https://web.archive.org/web/20070217132137/http://worldofotherkin.forumup.nl/). The forum seemed to redirect to the website www.otherkins.org.
A lot of meetings happened over the next months. We would choose a city to meet up (anywhere in The Netherlands or Belgium) and just hang out together, walk somewhere, usually have dinner and then head home again. A lot of one on one meetings also happened once we knew how close everyone lived.
5 August 2007: Creation of the “OurOtherReflection” forum, a continuation of the previous forum. (https://web.archive.org/web/20130923021014/http://otherreflection.multiforum.nl/viewtopic.php?t=129&start=15&sid=8878190495cd1c7c54780de91b07bf7a&mforum=otherreflection)
October 2007: Creation of my DeviantArt account IceDragonLord (https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://icedragonlord.deviantart.com/*), later renamed to Zwartice (https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://zwartice.deviantart.com/*)
Early 2008: I joined GNH (https://www.deviantart.com/gratuitousnonhumanty) and became very active in their chatroom. A lot of those connections became part of my daily interactions on MSN and Skype.
Early 2011: I got an email from a Swedish channel asking for an interview and maybe even coming over to film me. Apparently they found my email on the Otherkin.net website and found my story interesting. I gave them some answers but did decline being interviewed. Later it turned out to be that now famous Channel 5 TV series called Outsiders and in particular the episode about the furry fandom, aired on October 4th 2011, which included a Therian.
April 2011: I deleted my Otherkin.net account. I can't remember why, but maybe it had to do with being approached by the News Station, or maybe it was the feeling of not needing it anymore. I had found a group of Otherkin, offline and online.
June 2015: The Our Other Reflection forum was deleted. It also ended the Belgium and Dutch Otherkin community as a whole. Personal contact did continue on Skype, but eventually that too ended.
I also decided to focus more on this life and more or less left the community as a whole.
January 2017: Deletion of my DeviantArt account after deciding to burn any bridges that were left over.
May 2022: My Discord account (created in 2017) was used to join the Otherkin community again. Otherkin.net was the first server.
Current year: Still active on Discord, namely but not limited to: Otherkin.net, Eurokin, The Celestial Spire, Mythcord, Dragonkin.eu
I am currently in a 2 Dutch/Belgium servers, and it makes me happy to see there has been a massive growth in community.
Attending online conventions: Othercon, Shining Hearth, The Draconic Summit.
Attending physical meet-ups with other Dragonkin through: https://dragonkin.eu