Connection to the Monastery

[etcshadow]

Something interesting just happened. I was browsing some folks' homenodes, and I saw someone (broquaint), who had marked out one of my nodes on a short (well, not so short) list of "neat" nodes.

Now, this feels unbelievable corny to say, but it really touched me in a deep and unexpected way. I think it's the first time that I really felt like I was being accepted as a member of this community... the first indication that anyone was really listening to me and/or getting to know me.

So, on the one hand, in the corny mood that put me in, I felt like sharing that with y'all... On the other hand, I figured it would be interesting to hear if anyone went through a similar realization of emotional connection, and what caused it for you?

[hossman]

Recently I was searching for a topic I was having trouble deciding what the "best" way to handle was. I spent quite a bit of time tweaking super search parameters, and scrolling through lists of nodes, and clicking "in thread ____" links and following links to other nodes people mentioned in the nodes my searches found, and at one point I stumbled upon a really old thread, with a reply that I thought made a lot of sense, and had some really practicle info in it. I rarely bother to vote, but I figured in this case, why not -- and then discovered two things:

• I wasn't allowed to vote on the node, because i wrote it (several years ago).
• It had a reall high Reputation, which I normally don't get that excited about, but in this case, I was a little stoked not just that people had liked the node, but that they had agreed with me about liking the node.

[woolfy]

Well, my mom died this April, and I have had no time to do much on Perl Monks except read and vote and consider nodes. It was quite a shock when liz pointed out to me that my node Where and how to start learning Perl has ended up in the best nodes of the year. I'm quite ashamed to say that I'm still not in a position to answer questions from monks, while I am a pontiff saint (shriek) by now, completely undeservedly. There are monks that are "just" a monk or scribe that have much more Perl knowledge and experience than me.

There's a real Perl connection here. Perl Monks works. It's a pity some people don't return (come on Abi, you are sorely missed!). I feel really attached to this community. Imagine how proud I am of this Best Node thing...