Before any various dramas befall me and make it look like I'd be cowering out, this seems like a good spot in the timeline to say I am retiring my nic from the board, something I have been considering for a long time. Should GC set a date to close, I will of course post my goodbyes, but for some years now I've not been kind to the formerly thoughtful nic, and not been comfortable posting with it. I'll still use it for weekend chats, for those few with whom I have conversed frequently. However, it seems all the stars have really aligned in a way that finally tells me yes, time to hang up the old nic.

I don't have any others, and at this time, I have no plans to register a new one. I also don't post anywhere else. We'll see how long this idea lasts, I suppose.

Thank you, GC, for helping me through a period of great questioning in my life. I never would have realized way back then that I'd be posting something like this nearly 20 years later. Mind honestly blown.

Keep up the good fight, good people who are also fighters. Honor the will of the girl you adore. Be sensitive and intuitive. There is no better path to the graces of their requited love than the honest one.<3

By the same token, do not let your enthusiasm blind you to being used or manipulated. Nobody is giving you points for a martyrdom based in some dreamed up sacred naivety, and it doesn't do the girl any favors to be her early schmuck either.

There's gold in them archives.