Enough is Enough

My mother always said: "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all." Bright lady. And I've done a really good job of not saying anything, even when biting my tongue meant snipping off a piece of my integrity.

I'm still not going to say anything that isn't nice. Of course, I'm not going to say anything nice either. As of this morning, I am cancelling my membership at Absolute Write. It's been a long time coming. I won't go into the gory details. (Thanks to my mother for giving me the grace not to get nasty.) Suffice it to say, my personal philosophies and those of the forum's owner and some of its administrators/moderators are antithetical.

I was doing a darned good job of ignoring those members who went against my own beliefs. But when it comes down to that wide of a philosophical gap with the owner, I have to cut loose and walk away. *shrug* I tried to ignore one of the moderators, but under the new regime, you can't do that. (I've done it before when Jenna still owned the site, but under Mac, it's a bozo-nono.) Actually, it worked out to my advantage. The inability to ignore made me face an unpleasant truth - you cannot sit idly by with your fingers in your ears and your eyes closed. Just because you can't see it or hear it, doesn't mean it's not still happening.

I fully planned to just walk away and never come back. Then I got to thinking...

My words were contributing to the value of this forum. Perhaps a person was coming to the forum, and after reading the positive words of myself and people like me, they were being pulled in and not only adding their own value in words, but also paying a membership fee. Ack. I don't know what Mac does with the money she gets--she could be funding Greenpeace for all I care; it's her money to do with as she pleases--but I can't allow myself to be party to it anymore.

So, for the past few days, I have systematically deleted every post I made while I was an active member. (Makes me wish I hadn't been so prolific, but thems the breaks.) The only exception being any post I made which started a thread, (in which I deleted the text of my message) and any post made in a thread that had been 'locked' for one reason or another. Nothing I can do about those.

I'm truly sorry to have to do it. There are many many good people at AW, and there is still some value in their words. But when I weighed the value of the site against the disvalue, the scales tipped horribly to the wrong side, leaving only one logical choice open to me.

When I think about it, I'm actually relieved. This subject has been weighing on my mind for several months now. Deep down, I knew I would have to do this, but I didn't want to let it go. I'm glad I finally mustered the intestinal fortitude to say 'Enough'.

I hope those few wonderful people I met while I was there stop by the blog on occasion and say Hi. Those are the people I will miss. The rest is best characterized by Shakespeare... "a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury; signifying nothing."