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Well, my friends, enemies, cronies, proteges, underlings, whatever you may be,
My time at the MoWAA is (most likely, and at least temporarily) at an end.
It’s a day that I’ve been looking forward to and simultaneously dreading ever since my appointment. This place is the only Ministry I’ve ever really known and the first place outside of UCRs to give me a chance. And to be frank, it’s been one hell of a chance and something I will always cherish.
With it, this closing address will fit into two parts: one reflective on the term and broader trends under my leadership and the second more personally reflective.
First, let’s look at some trends and nice things that have happened in the last four and eight months:
- We managed to have the Heroes of Valhalla program, which started last term, bear some fruit. Working with Europeia and Balder, we passed our first Commendation through the Security Council in Commend Calvin Coolidge, and, while we are still not sure of our stance on it, have contributed on Commend Andusre (which, to wit, was added well after the program started). We also have at least three potential things coming down the pipeline, but I don’t want to spoil our surprises!
- We onboarded a ton of new staffers this term and the last and saw newcomers, and returning faces, soar. Gem, Cretox, and Freg have all been absolutely invaluable to me personally and have done great work. I look forward to seeing how things work out for them in the future.
- We wrote several How-To Guides for staffers on writing proposals and opening and closing threads though several How-Tos are still yet to be created.
- We continued our work inside of WALL liaising on proposals, with more people getting in on the fun of IFVs–my special thanks go to Deropia and Simone Republic for their huge help here!
While perhaps a more meta term in setting up my successors and future staffers for future success, we have also managed the day-to-day tasks of sending out IFVs, making voting threads, and more. After 8 months, I am pleased with what the machine has become and am pleased with where we stand.
I am confident in the future of this Ministry, more so than I was when I started. I know that whoever succeeds me has a set of very strong and capable people who they can rely on to do their work and who will do wonderful things for them just as they have for me.
But now, on to the self reflection part.
I’m posting this today, May 7th, 2022 because it is of some significance to me personally. Not just because we’re in the middle of an election, but because today is the start of the rest of my life. This morning, I graduated from my University with my BA in Political Science and History. This was a place that I came into loving wholeheartedly (my dad likes to say that as soon as we stepped foot on campus the first time he knew I was coming here), but scarcely known. Yet over these past three years, I’ve come to know this place and love it even more than I did when I started. Starting this fall, I’ll be pursuing my PhD in Political Science in another place I’ve never known and will have to learn to love in the same way as I dearly love my alma mater. So it has been with the Ministry of World Assembly Affairs: a place I loved from my first interaction with it, but something I came to learn a lot about–something which only deepened my love for it.
Change has always been difficult for me. As some of you know, the man behind Hulldom was diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder at age 3, and partially as a result of being autistic, I’ve always been resistant to change except when I know it’s necessary. The shift to being mostly out of the UCR sphere was precisely that: a transition I knew was necessary. When I first joined the MoWAA, I won’t lie and say I didn’t view it as a vehicle for the proposals I wanted to write. I didn’t think I was ever going to be really integrated into the work or the region, but soon enough I took to it and to here. As I came to know it, I came to love it.
As I took that work and to the region, it was painful at first leaving the world of constant political action for an altogether more subtle game with personalities that didn’t need to be larger than life because their achievements already made them mountains of people. Later on though, I learned to embrace it. I then entered another world, Gameplay, where bravado and ego are almost bywords for achievement, even though achievement often brings with it a sense of superiority and contributes to ego there.
However, even given my interactions with the WA and Gameplay and even when I was given a shot at running this motley crew in August 2021, I didn’t know that I would end up here, having made the acquaintance and friendship of so many awesome people. Having made it through so much and having been at least a passing thought and motivator for two seismic shifts in the laws of this region is not something I ever truly thought possible.
I didn’t know that I would prove to be at least passable at the job of staffer and then Deputy Minister and finally Minister. Perhaps even in my naive sense of achievement I failed to really appreciate the chances I was given and, well, I should have been more thankful to the people who took those chances on me. To West and Robes, MJ and Ghost and all the rest of you who instilled your faith in me to lead our beloved region’s World Assembly Affairs Ministry, thank you, from the bottom of my heart.
It’s often a little trite to say it, but at least so far, it has been the privilege of my young life to serve you all.
To Cretox too, the man, the myth, the legend. My best friend on this site, a mentor, a confidante, and someone I always knew would treat me as mostly his equal, your faith in me was occasionally not warranted, but you definitely saw something and, well, look at us now.
To conclude, if you ever really get to know me, you’ll know that one of my favorite bands is a recently retired Scottish folk rock band named Runrig. You’d know that their album “In Search of Angels” is one of my favorites (I actually think it’s one of the best albums of all time). But you may not know that my favorite song of theirs is the last song of their last album (“The Story”), “Somewhere”.
It’s a song that I claim is the song my IRL best friend and I will always remember and have as our own as it reminds me so much of our friendship and his Mission. (Perhaps that expansive sense of wonder and the loneliness of not having him is what drove me to do WA stuff.) But it’s the last few lines of the chorus that I want to highlight now as I think it it is a fitting end to my journey here for now:
“Somewhere in the dark I’ll find you, somewhere in the light I’ll meet you there”,
~~Hulldom
Minister of World Assembly Affairs
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