I first made a Newgrounds account 10 years ago. That's nuts. I was 13 when I was first browsing this site. I'm still have fond memories of navigating through the series of porn ads while trying to view cartoons on my families desktop in the living room.
I regret leaving the flash community. I LOVED the flash community when I was younger. Not only did I immerse myself in it - I showed all my friends. I wanted to share my love. I had dreams of being the next Legendary Frog (who at the time was immensely popular), and sunk ludicrous amounts of time into games and movies that unfortunately never made it due to a long series of unfortunate computer failures.
But what was the nail in the coffin for me wasn't my own personal failure. It was the damnation of flash. I remember back when flash was hated, mocked, and ridiculed. "If you want to make a game that's actually good, don't learn actionscript. It'll only be a waste of time." "Anything that is essentially a plug in will never stand the sands of time." "Flash crashes like crazy, it's terrible.", and so on and so forth. These messages compounded until my belief was that flash was a fun little hobby, but mostly a waste of time. I'd be just as well off playing a video game (and over the years, many a game playing has happened!) or watching tv. Little did I know of the future that flash had. Launching internet celebrities like Egoraptor or Rubber Ross into their careers, or even game developers like Edmund McMillan.
I regret giving up because other people told me to. 10 years later, I'm back, and full of piss and vinegar. I have an internship making web games, and a slowly but albeit growing blog. I'm back practicing a passion that never really left me.
And I'll be damned if I ever let someone take that away from me again.