I’ll make this short. I’ve joined the team over at Metanorn, and I’ll no longer be a part of Borderline Hikikomori. Thank you to all readers and commenters. It was a lot of fun being a part of this team, and it was gratifying to be able to reach and interact with so many people. I learned a lot about blogging and writing in my time here, and I thank Rakuen (and the now retired CJ) for taking a chance on me and giving me such an opportunity.

Anyway, since everyone’s been putting together lists, here’s my top list of all the anime I blogged in some capacity here:

1. FLCL (10 years later retrospectives)
2. Evangelion 2.22
3. The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya
4. Bakemonogatari
5. Magical Girl Madoka Magica (My last episodic here)
6. Durarara!! (Substituted in for Rakuen a few times)
7. Yet the Town Keeps Going
8. Arakawa Under the Bridge
9. Ookami-san and Seven Companions
10. Dance in the Vampire Bund (My first episodic here)
11. Amagami SS
12. Black Rock Shooter

Please pay me a visit at Metanorn some time. I’ll be active with a couple episodics this coming Winter 2012 season.

I’ll make this short. I’ve joined the team over at Metanorn, and I’ll no longer be a part of Borderline Hikikomori. Thank you to all readers and commenters. It was a lot of fun being a part of this team, and it was gratifying to be able to reach and interact with so many people. I learned a lot about blogging and writing in my time here, and I thank Rakuen (and the now retired CJ) for taking a chance on me and giving me such an opportunity.

Anyway, since everyone’s been putting together lists, here’s my top list of all the anime I blogged in some capacity here:

1. FLCL (10 years later retrospectives)

2. Evangelion 2.22

3. The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya

4. Bakemonogatari

5. Magical Girl Madoka Magica (My last episodic here)

6. Durarara!! (Substituted in for Rakuen a few times)

7. Yet the Town Keeps Going

8. Arakawa Under the Bridge

9. Ookami-san and Seven Companions

10. Dance in the Vampire Bund (My first episodic here)

11. Amagami SS

12. Black Rock Shooter

Please pay me a visit at Metanorn some time. I’ll be active with a couple episodics this coming Winter 2012 season.

About a week ago, 2-D Teleidoscope made a post titled The Sexy Otaku Manifesto, in which he wrote about “getting back into shape” and called out to other “geeks” and “otaku” to do the same. 21stcenturydigitalboy wrote a response on Fuzakenna, The Inauthenticity of Nerd Appearances – All of Us Are Slaves, And Most of Us Are Liars that elaborated on the idea further, going also into the mindset that leads otaku to be unfit. He also told a bit of his own story and that of his friends/relatives regarding fitness.

These posts piqued my interest because personal fitness is a (dare I use the term?) passion of mine. I understand their sentiment, more than you can imagine, as I’ll try to show in this post. But something about the posts bothered me. They rubbed me the wrong way. I believe that they got their message all wrong. If you want to engender change in behavior relative to fitness, if you really believe in some “Sexy Otaku Manifesto,” you don’t do it by telling others that they need to change or by calling them liars.

Let me back up. Each of those posters said something about their own personal fitness history or goals, so I think it’s appropriate that I share mine. I’ll start almost 2 years ago in July of 2008. I’m 5 feet, 9 inches (175cm) tall and have been for about a decade now. At that point, I weighed 217 pounds (98.4Kg). For those of you without a BMI calculator handy, that’s a 32.1 BMI, or well into the “obese” range. And even though BMI isn’t the best measure of fitness, believe me, “obese” was the right word to describe me. I was the very image of the fat otaku.

OK, so I wasn't THAT far gone. But believe me, it was pretty bad. I didn't even get Persona 3 until 2009.

I can’t tell you what or if anything even clicked in me at that point. But I decided that I had had enough. I set what I felt then was a reasonable goal: lose 50 pounds in 2 years. By the end, I would weigh 167 pounds (75.7Kg), right under the 25 BMI boundary between “normal” and “overweight,” and that wasn’t even 1/2 pound a week! Piece of cake, right?

I started to eat right. And I started running. At first, I could barely make it to 100m before I had to walk. But if I had to walk, I kept walking until I could run again. I got my running endurance from 30 seconds to a minute. Then to 2 minutes, then 5, then 10. I still remember the first time I ran for 30 minutes. I had just passed the 3 mile marker when my watch finally read “30:00.” I was so busy looking at the watch, I tripped on my own feet and landed face first. Fortunately, I had maintained enough control to fall to the side, onto the grass. The dirt was sweet, and it was September.

Then from 30 to 40. I leveled off at that, spiking upwards only when I really felt good. It was a cold, snowy winter that year, but it only made me more excited. By the time the calendar had rolled around to 2009, I had run more than 50 minutes exactly once, covering 6 miles in 54. And I weighed 169 pounds (76.7Kg). My BMI was pretty much right on that 25 line that I had shot for.

Then came the strength training. I won’t bore you any further with the numbers regarding that. Right now, 1 year 10 months after I had made my choice, I weigh 144 pounds (65.3Kg). That’s a BMI of 21.3, right around the middle of the “normal” range. I can squat 3/4 of my body weight, do 14 pull ups, run a 10K in 42:44 (6:53/mile). I’ve become fit.

What am I trying to say here? Am I trying to brag? Maybe. I do feel proud. But on the Internets, everyone is a tough guy. Everyone is a man’s man and everyone looks like someone from 300 (I wonder how many times that movie has been referenced in relation to fitness?). There is no reason for you to believe me, so I don’t think I’d be accomplishing anything by bragging. Maybe I just wanted to write it down to make me feel good.

On the Internets, everyone's a tough guy.

But the purpose with which I wrote this is to put a proper context to what I’m about to say. When it comes to fitness and weight loss, I’ve been to hell and back (That’s not to say that I’m done. I’ll continually be reaching for more for for the rest of my life). And I did it effortlessly. I never once looked at my plate with dread or despair over the contents. My heart only pumped harder with excitement when it was 20 degrees outside and I had a date with 4.5 miles of road. I got the gain with no pain (well, except for that knee injury I had in spring 2009). I believe that my message holds true even if you ignore my history with fitness, but I believe having it in mind strengthens it. Take it for what you will.

Maybe the ease with which I had achieved my goals fills me with guilt, which is why my sensibilities were offended by some of the content in 2DT’s and 21stcenturydigitalboy’s posts. They have the right idea, at the high level: put your mind to it, and your body can be what you want it to be. And if you don’t care how your body looks, think very deeply about why that is. Are you being honest to yourself? Are you being fair to yourself? I don’t pretend to know the answer for anyone; I can barely answer the question for myself. But if you can say yes, you’ve reached a state of mind that few of us can ever hope to reach.

But it’s wrong to think you can cause behavioral change by simply telling them to change or by calling them liars. At best you’re just insulting them. At worst, you’re only contributing to the cycle of low self esteem that can lead to bad fitness in the first place. Real change comes from within. And no one can control that but the person himself.

And that’s what I’m really trying to get at here. It’s not anyone’s place to tell others that they should look a certain way. We choose to be who we are. Some of don’t prioritize our fitness as highly as others. Some – most – no, probably all – of us lie to ourselves to make ourselves feel better. But that’s our choice. It was my choice to become healthy, to become fit, and that’s why it worked and has lasted. Change not of our own choosing is meaningless and cannot survive.

If you really want to see others change, give them the tools, the encouragement, the ideas of change. First, let them understand that it’s possible. Then, give them the choice. Maybe give them a nudge, but don’t push, because they’ll only push back. 2DT himself seems to understand this when he writes, “The people I’d really like to reach with this message will likely never read it, or simply ignore it.”

I had said that getting fit had been easy for me. It’s true. But what allowed that was the biggest change in me, which was in my mind. As my mindset changed, I learned to like – to love – the things that would naturally cause my body to become fit. It was gradual, and I only realized it after the fact.

But I’m not naive or arrogant enough to think that just because I found the change to be easy, it should or will be for others. It was only in looking back that I realized just how much my mind had changed. I had become a different person, and I had barely realized it in the process. It’s pretty daunting to think of at times. I refuse to trivialize it by telling others to simply go do it.

So what really can I contribute? What can I do if I want people to change? If I want others to make the same kinds of decisions regarding their bodies as I made regarding my body? There’s no knowledge I can offer that you can’t find in a million other places. (except maybe this: People on /fit/ are assholes, but they know what they’re talking about. If you can stand the heat, take a gander over there and read some threads, even start one. I take no responsibility for the consequences).

To paraphrase Hitagi from Bakemonogatari episode 12, “What I can offer is my body.” It is yet another example of people changing their fitness for the better. There’s no reason why your body can’t be one too. I’m going to invoke Kamina here, just like 21stcenturydigitalboy did with his post. Not for his perfect body, but rather for his message. Believe in yourself. If you can’t, believe in me, because I’ve been down the same path, and I believe that you can do it too.

What do Archer, Shizuo, and Kamina have in common besides being perfect physical specimen? They got to where they are by doing what they believed in. (OK, fine, Shizuo kinda had an unfair advantage. But you know what I mean).

If you get nothing else out of this post, if this is tl;dr, let me just try to get this one message out: don’t judge. Just think about what it means to be an otaku. Like, how they use the word over in Japan. It’s a term used not only for anime fans, but for hardcore fans of anything particularly niche. It means liking something that few others care about to an extent few others care to understand. And that’s why in order for a community to form among otaku, judgments need to be held at the door. Let others be who they are.

Blogging, simply put, is the defining tool of a new era of journalism, both inside of geekdom and outside it. It puts power in the hands of the underdogs: no matter who you are or what your education is, if you start a decent blog and pimp it hard enough, you’ll get your word out.

It also provides for discussions and social interactions unlike any other media form out there… and that’s why I started blogging. August 2007 was the month I began homeschooling, which did quite a number on my RL social life, obviously. I was determined to meet other people fascinated with Japanese animation and comics, just like me. Needless to say, that experiment worked pretty well: I now have some of the greatest friends in the whole world, and my baby is getting 25,000 pageviews a month with 250+ RSS feed subscribers.

But now I’m walking away. A third-degree existential crisis hit me yesterday, and though most of it was mainly about real life stuff, some of it was about my blogging. To sum it up, I’ve hit the point where blogging isn’t doing anything for me anymore, and it’s conflicting with my RL goals. I really hate to leave this behind, because I don’t want things to change; I don’t want to move on. But it’s happening, and this post goes a bit more into why. It’s a little tl;dr, but I’m explaining it all in hopes that maybe it’ll prove to be inspiring for someone else. I don’t want anyone else to quit aniblogging, obviously, but the emotions and logic in this post are fairly relevant to a lot of things besides blogging.

And in the words of my AP US History teacher, no, this ain’t gonna be a “sit around the campfire and sing kumbaya” post. (Of course, I guess that depends on your definition of one…)

My retirement has been a long time coming. Since October (or even before,) blogging has become a chore to me, to put it bluntly. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to watch the anime, per se, it was that I had begun not seeing the point of summarizing or reviewing the episode. Before that, I hadn’t blogged as much simply because of a lack of time – volleyball was in full swing, senior year had just started, I’d been taking college classes, and OH YEAH, I had mono. That was fun.

This whole spiral began with a disenchantment with the anime that were premiering at that time, and grew to a general discontentment. I became more and more interested in people and things IRL, and began reading and watching various entertainment sources less. This wasn’t too much of a bad thing, and I knew it was mainly happening because it was my senior year of high school. (For anyone who hasn’t been a senior in high school yet: it will be worse than you think it’s gonna be. Trust me.) Multiple hiatuses occurred, both formal and unannounced, because my priorities had shifted. I didn’t know why, at the time.

The drama over the past few months wasn’t even all that disenchanting; as I said on Twitter, I know I have my allies and my enemies, and that’s that. But as I sat down to blog Durarara!! late on Saturday, I suddenly wondered:

Why does this even matter?

I won’t explain the train of thought that finally put my emotions into words, because really, I don’t think I can. I just suddenly got to thinking about my real life goals, and what blogging’s really about, and how blogging can help me achieve those goals. It hit me pretty bluntly that honestly, it looks like blogging can’t do much else for me.

Don’t get me wrong: Blogging over the years has been absolutely amazing. I have loved making new friends and improving my writing skills, all while feeling like I was kinda “giving back” to fandom. I was homeschooled when I started this blog, and writing here was kinda what kept me sane. I loved it for a long, long time. I loved paneling, I loved conventions, and most of all, I loved the art form that is anime.

But now the entertainment has worn off. I’ve grown up quite a bit. I almost wish I hadn’t.

I’m now trying to pursue a double major in Criminal Justice and Japanese. I want to be an FBI Special Agent or something like that. I have real-world goals now, and real-world friends and values. It’s not that you guys aren’t important, it’s just that I need to step back and really refocus on using my talents to the fullest. I’m at the point where I’ve ended up asking, “Is there a point to blogging, especially if I’m no longer enjoying it?”

There’s a point to blogging, of course, it’s just not right for me anymore. And it’s not even that I don’t love anime anymore; I just love other things more. I want to love writing and the social aspects that come with them, but when I compare those things to the RL things that matter more, I can’t keep spending 5+ hours a week managing a blog.

As I’ve made clear over the past week, I’ve stopped caring about the social aspect of blogging… and that’s turning out to be a good thing. If I’d had this epiphany back in December or so, I probably couldn’t have handled it. But now I’m simply looking at it and wondering, “Wait, why DO I care about what 100-odd quasi-anonymous people think about what I think about Durarara!!’s fictional characters each week?”

I want the aniblogosphere to thrive. I want it to be full of people that love journalism and anime, and combine those two loves into something useful and beautiful. I just don’t want to be a part of it, anymore, because it’s not in line with my real-life goals and loves. It’s crowding out my other, more useful loves; and while hobbies are good to have,, they’re also supposed to be fun and beneficial to your real-life health, intelligence and relationships. This one’s only helping the third, and it’s pretty minimal, at this point.

I’m rambling, at this point (sorry ^^; ) and I guess I’ll just summarize the changes that are probably going to happen with me and the blog:

Am I deleting the blog? Heck no. xD
Am I leaving the blog to Rakuen? Yes, but not effective immediately. Him and I have talked things over, and I’ll tie up a few things I want fixed (in old posts, etc) before fading into the background. I’ll still be around to fix typos and such, and maybe chip in for a convention post, if I go to any more (see final question.) But for 95% of the posts, I’m done.
Am I leaving because I’m mad/sad/disappointed? I’m disappointed that I’m not having fun anymore, and that this all boils down to the fact that I’m growing up. But other than that, there’s no negative feelings here.
Am I going to stop reading manga and watching anime? Oh, heck no. I’ll probably cut back a fair amount; but despite being fiction, anime and manga are art forms, really, and I can’t just abandon them. Besides, subtitled anime is good for reinforcing the Japanese I’ve learned. <3
Am I leaving Twitter/LJ? Nope. I’ll make my Twitter a lot more RL-oriented, probably, and LJ will probably become that way as well. But I’ll still make fangirly tweets and posts when I discover shiny pretties or an episode of something simply blows me away.
Am I still going to write fanfics/make icons/do cosplay? 90% no to all 3. It seems sudden, yeah, but… Anime is fiction, and for me, making it a huge part of my lifestyle is ridiculous. I might bring out my Rohfa or Ema Skye cosplays one more time, but no more; fanfiction is pointless to me now, and LJ icon-making will only happen if I find extraordinarily shiny pretties. (Which is all too possible. MARIIIIIIIII <3)
Am I going to go to conventions anymore? … This one is harder to answer. I have already committed to doing Anime Blogging panels at Matsuricon this fall, but after that, I’m not sure. I might just go to Ohayocon as a fan and relax a lot more, and not worry about cosplay/panels constantly, especially since Ohayo’s a great place for me to see my friends.

In summary… this hurts. I’m reaching the age where I have to start living more rationally and prioritize more, and even though blogging’s not as fun as it used to be, I’d love to stick with it. It’s an escape of sorts, for me, but it’s an escape that I don’t think I need anymore.

I love you guys a lot. Rakuen, Crisu, Jenni, Dave, Icystorm, and our newest members lvlln and Raphael… Thank you so much for being here for so long. The experiences here have made me a better writer, fan, and administrator, period. I know the things I’ve learned here will help me in the long run, even if it’s not truly worth continuing. No matter what happens to this blog, you guys have all made a difference in fandom and to me.

To all of our readers… Thank you. Thank you so much for supporting me and my project and allowing me to make new friends. Everything here was worth my time for 2+ years; and it’s not anything y’all did or didn’t do that’s making me want to leave. It’s my own conscience. I hope you all will keep reading and supporting our other writers, because they’re talented and passionate about writing and anime, even though it’s time for me to distance myself from those things.

Best wishes,

CJ Blackwing

PS- No, I swear this is not an elaborate pre-April Fool’s joke. It’s not a joke at all. Sorry about the crappy timing, though… XD;

I had hoped for a long time that I would never have need for a post like this.  Unfortunately, hopes only get you so far in life.  I have avoided “the Janette issue” for some time, but in view of recent events, punctuated by this comment, I believe I must respond.  I will make two promises to you in this post.  First, I will be honest.  Second, I will handle myself with as much maturity as possible.  I present the post in a Question and Answer format because that is the way concerns have been presented to me, therefore it makes the most sense to use it.  Do note that the remainder of this post is quite long and directly relates to drama.  If you would like to turn back now, you are free to do so.

1) Were you ever romantically involved with Janette?

Yes, I did have romantic interest in her in late 2007 and early 2008.  I never went out on a personal date with her but I have been over to her house once, amongst friends.  I also spent all of Anime Punch 2008 with her.  The relationship did not work out for several reasons that are frankly none of your business, and I would appreciate it if you did not try to pry.  We remained friends until around Matsuricon of 2008.  Following that, we had a blog-related dispute, and in the aftermath, I cut most ties with her outside of a professional nature.

2) Did you join Borderline Hikikomori to win her back?

No.  I will admit that I found out that CJ was looking for writers from her, when she linked me to the blog in an IM conversation.  However, I joined for my own personal reasons.  I thought it would be something new and fun to try, and that it would give me something to pass the time when I had nothing else to do.

3) Why did you quit/stagnate in writing then?

What can I say?  I burned out quickly.  I picked two series that ended up leaving me nothing to write about.  Oinari-sama sucked so hard that I could not bear to watch it anymore, and Himitsu had such an irregular release schedule that I could not follow it.  From there, it was a long time until the next season, and though I started trying to write again, I just never got back into it.  I could attribute some of that to that time being a transitional period, where I started to have many new experiences in quick succession.  Despite that, I never lost touch with CJ.

4) Why did she leave? / Why did you kick her out?

Really, the best way to put it is it came down to management of the blog.  CJ and Janette had a discussion over a blog feature we were going to do, and unfortunately, it escalated quickly.  Words were said behind closed doors that never should have been exchanged via IM, text, e-mail, and phone.  This included Janette calling CJ’s cell phone 29 times in a 2-hour period.  This eventually culminated in Janette posting about internal blog problems publicly on Twitter, after which CJ told her to cease and desist from airing our dirty laundry, as it were.  She then proceeded to make a post on this blog, which we deleted –  not to prevent readers from finding her new blog, but because it was made in bad taste.  Consider that one of the tags on the post read, “I hate you,” which I found in our tag cloud during my Reorganization Project.  You can decide whether telling your boss that you hate him or her is a notice of quitting or a reason for firing for yourselves.  Beyond that, again, the ordeal happened behind closed doors and thus I will not post any more than that.

5) Have you ever attacked her or her blog over this matter?

Yes, on exactly two occasions.  The first occurred when she made a public post about the situation on her own blog.  She deleted that comment and started a rather long and drawn out private message chain on Facebook with me.  Once again, emotions ran high and we exchanged many words behind closed doors, and I will not make that public.  The second time occurred on a mutual friend’s wall on Facebook, where she again publicly brought up the blog drama.  I realize that I should have just let it slide; however, I publicly confronted her about it on that same wall.  I have not attacked her in any way since the Facebook wall incident.  In addition, it must be noted that on both occasions I did things in a domain in which I had no control.  I have never used this blog, my twitter, my LiveJournal, my Facebook, or any other means under my direct control to attack her.  Whether or not this post constitutes “attack”, I leave up to you to decide.

6) Have you ever seen the emails, logs, or texts CJ has in her possession?

No, I have not.  I also feel it is better that I never personally see them.  I realize I have claimed to in the past.  An aspect of battling with information is that as a rule, you never know who knows what until an exchange actually occurs.  Thus, it does not matter if I have access to information, as long as it appears I have it.  It is a simple tactic used to bluff your way into acquiring information or getting a look into the mindset of the other person.  In the end, it failed at the former but succeeded at the latter.  That is all there is to it.

7) Has she ever attacked you or your blog over this matter?

Indeed, she has, on several occasions.  Besides the farewell post, she has made several comments on this very blog encouraging trolling and attempting to flame us.  We have deleted them or marked them as spam, but screenshots persist forever.  She has made numerous posts on Twitter about us, which have come to my attention through various means.  I have seen disparaging comments on blogs that I read, some of which the authors have deleted.  CJ has also told me of harassing text messages she has received in the aftermath.  I cannot speak for the contents of her Facebook or LiveJournal and will not speculate on the matter.

8) Do you stalk her or any of her outlets?

No, I do not.  Of course, it would be foolhardy of me to say that I have no knowledge of their existence.  On the occasion that someone notifies me of a posting relevant to this blog or me, I do check the source to verify information.  Beyond that, I do not read anything that she writes.  In fact, when it came to my attention that my accounts were still following her on sites such as LiveJournal, deviantArt, and Myspace, I removed those network links of my own volition, even though some of have sat unused for quite some time.

9a) But you are blogging the same series as her!

If you really want to use that as evidence of stalking, you have about 50 other blogs to suspect as well.  That said, I will tell you my reasons for selecting my series during the Winter season.  I have documented my love for school comedies quite well on this blog, so Baka to Test to Shoukanjuu was both my natural and first choice.  I also stated that I had interest in Sora no Woto, since it is the first of an ambitious project to make anime with no source material.  When no one picked it up by the end of the first week, I grabbed it myself.  Finally, I selected Katanagatari because I felt I could devote the time to a series that only airs once a month and I enjoyed the storytelling and verbal play.

9b) But you read and comment on the same blogs as her!

Again, you have many other people to hit up if you want to use this line of reasoning.  Reading other blogs is a necessary component of existing in the aniblogosphere, and one that I neglected entirely until this year.  The first blog I started reading was Bokutachi no Blog, which you can find in our blogroll.  I found them because I did not know about Chartfag at the time (shock and awe, I know) and needed a list of series for the Winter 2010 post.  From there, I have slowly branched out to other blogs by clicking random links on blogrolls and checking the personal sites of frequent commenters.  Additionally, there are a few blogs out there that have us linked, and when I notice those incoming clicks, I naturally check out their blog.  I read blogs because I enjoy what is written and I comment to show my appreciation and facilitate discussion.

9c) But you stole her blog design!

*sigh* Okay, this is in reference to my Hiiragi avatar, and CJ’s Anri avatar.  About two months ago, I joined Speed Demos Archive.  After a while, I decided to get an avatar for the site, and I did not want to use the same one I had displayed everywhere for the last half year.  I was watching Hanamaru Kindergarten and I saw her in Detective Conan cosplay.  My favorite character in the series is Hiiragi, and I thought it was adorable, so I captured it and made it my avatar.  Then I decided to spread that to other places, because as I mentioned, I had used the same one for half a year.  When CJ saw mine, she decided she wanted an Anri avatar and capped her own.  That is all there is to it.

10) So, what brought you back into writing?

It is no secret, Janette accounted for many posts in 2009.  I actually did the math out of curiosity.  She made or contributed to 150 posts constituting 62.5% of the blog in the span of a year.  By comparison, I contributed a paltry 10.8% of posts.  When faced with statistics like that, the only options are to step up and fill the void, or just let it roll over and die.  I decided upon the former course of action.  I launched into my Redesign Project which still steadily continues today, started participating more in the aniblogging community, and rediscovered a passion for writing.  I also find writing to be a cathartic release in some ways.

11) Do you have a goal of wiping her out of the aniblogosphere?

I suppose that might fix many problems.  However, the answer is no.  I do not care about her.  I do not care about her blog.  If she enjoys writing and people enjoy reading her writing, then more power to her.  It is always good to have more voices in the aniblogisphere.  I do not care who her friends are.  If people want to be friends with her, I have absolutely no issue with it.  I know not all of my friends get along, some of them even hate each other, but it does not stop me from being friends with them.  The only thing I have ever wanted is for the public harassment to stop.

12) What, then, is the purpose of this post?

Frankly, I made it to present my side of the issue.  I ignored it for a long time, but as events continue, I no longer feel that I am able to do so, nor that ignoring it is in my best interests.  Yes, I have handled some things poorly, and I have done things of which I am not proud.  I freely admit that.  Even so, I feel that I at least take some aspect out of every mistake that I can use to make myself a better person and I hope it allows me to avoid further mistakes in the future.  I hope you have all approached this posting with an open mind.  Whether your view of me changes is entirely up to you, for better or worse.  I respect any decisions or comments you might have.  I hope this is the first and last time I will ever have to address this topic.  Thank you for reading, and good day.