The forum had taken off while I was MIA. In spite of me being MIA. And while I could write a manifesto about how the forum had gone in a direction I didn't necessarily want, I had to admit that my plans for the forum weren't better nor more correct than the plans that emerged organically from the community over the years.
When you create something with a community and ecosystem, it's easy to see the success of the ecosystem and the downstream success of the people within it as your success when in reality you are more like an early collaborator who set the stage for others to join in and take it from there.
A good example of this in my case was the hubris that, because I created that one big forum, I could create more successful forums. I never hit gold again. I realized I wasn't some master forum creator, just someone who started something at the right time and the right place with just enough TLC to attract other builders, and that I didn't have some divine insight into how to start a successful forum. Oof.