Farewell

(I am writing this ahead of time, as I will be away most of tomorrow attending the wedding of a good friend.)

I want to thank all of you for my time here.

Jill, Holly, Cara, Jack — and kactus and piny (come baaaaaack!) — thank you so much for letting me share your space. Having spent time monitoring the comment moderation queue now, my respect for all of you is significantly deepened! You all help shape an interesting and valuable community, and I am honored to have been able to use the platform that you (and past contributors) have built. I’ve always admired you as writers, but now I can appreciate you as community organizers as well. And I am grateful for the opportunity to speak to a wider audience. Again, thank you.

To the commenters, I extend my heartfelt thanks! It took a while to find my footing, but I think we have had very good and productive discussions, and yes, that includes those who added their criticisms. It was all of you who helped make my posts interesting and productive conversations, and I greatly appreciate all your contributions. I didn’t quite expect to write as much as I did, or as stridently as I did, but it came from the heart, and I do think I have learned quite a lot — both by looking into my own self, life and history and by listening to you all tell yours. I have been chastened in several areas and challenged to rework and refine even those most deeply-held views. And most of all, hearing such a wide range of experiences has been a learning moment for me, and I hope for everyone else who was reading too.

I have always enjoyed sticking my nose in on the conversations around here, but I have a deeper appreciation for the community here now and I’m glad to have had the chance to earn that.

My blog has been empty for these two weeks — I’m too much of a flake to cross-post consistently — but I will be updating regularly again. Again, I didn’t quite expect to end up writing all that I did here; I cover a somewhat broader range of subjects in my general writing. Still, if you have enjoyed my posts, or you just like to see a lot of kitty photos, please do subscribe to my blog feed and stop by for a comment once in awhile. I liked hearing from all of you very much; I hope to hear from a lot of you over there too!

Several subjects I didn’t cover here, but am working on piece by piece and hope to post at my site:

• What I like to call “Second shift for the sick”
• Strong womyn in a patriarchal system, complaints about them, and how it all ties together
• Poverty and “financial responsibility”
• The idea of diluting legitimacy and why it is a tool of the dominant classes to wield against individuals of an oppressed class who threaten the social order
• Class and career paths
  

Like I said in my introduction: I can’t promise any of these will get done, or when — but at least they give you a general idea of what I will be writing about in the future. There is a widget on my blog’s sidebar with a few of my own favorite posts picked out, if you feel like reading them.

Peace.