With a Mai Tai, my first alcoholic beverage in several weeks, and the final demise of my online book club, I'm a little numb. It helped that my drinking buddy was a book club friend. But this is going to resonate for a while. Without the book club, I might not have moved to SoCal. I certainly wouldn't have the friends I have in CA, both in SoCal and NorCal without it. I might have taken a different avenue to get friends, but I don't have illusions it would have worked so well. And now?
After the fatal blow to the book club in November, it could either rise from the ashes or fade to a remnant of its former self. Or option three, fade, start to come back, then a fresh poison injection comes along and people were no longer willing to give the club owner, the moderators, or really even the members in general, any leeway for being human let alone the benefit of the doubt. And today, it imploded. C'est la vie. The book club is dead. Long live the blog.
So I'll be looking for something to do with my time. I'm going to be feeling friend challenged for a while. Maybe just acquaintance challenged really. I've been feeling friend challenged since the brouhaha. Need to figure out a new and better way to keep up with people and culture and stuff. I've been itching to reconnect with friends I haven't kept up with so well so don't be surprised if you get more email than you used to. If you expect email and don't get some, pester me. I'm still trying to figure stuff out. Let me know how your life is going, if you have good internet sites where I can meet people, or just read random interesting stuff at all hours. Drop me a line when you can.
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8 comments:
Meowm understands how your feel Cranky Otter. She too had a drink last night and is feeling a little "off" today. She is very glad you have a blog because she loves to read what you have to say. We will have her send you any links if she finds some interesting places to visit online.....well, other than kitty blogs. ;)
And now, having posted them essage above, Meowm thought of a place. You may have checked it out before:
http://thepioneerwoman.com/
Check out the comments on her posts. Some of those poeple have blogs or sites linked.....
I seriously need to get you together with my bff Jerrod. I'll work on it :)
I expect some emails, STAT!
If you figure out what to do with extra free time be sure to email me some ideas. In the meantime I will devote myself to house cleaning and weeding the yard. And return to some of my needlecrafts that I haven't done in years. The book club will be sorely missed.
I'm so sorry it didn't work out. I've been awol more or less since the brouhaha last year. And I've sorely missed the sense of community/comraderie I used to get, before the politics of last year invaded and poisoned the place. :(
If you find another good place, let me know!
Natalia
Yeah, I agree, all. I'd just been creeping back to the site in recent weeks, due to the rise in hopeful, friendly posters, but then...
I'm sorry for all who found lots of friends and happy thoughts, and won't be able to look or share those there anymore.
I just didn't get the people who talked about betrayal over fictional characters, that no one thought it strange that people spent dozens of hours trashing a book BEFORE its release (and that those wackadoodles wouldn't alarm Suz) and had a bee in their bonnet about there being moderators for the BB and that part of the last stand was poor Chryssa upset over the banning of someone who has had some very unkind things to say about Chryssa :(
Forgive me if this is a little wonky, I wandered over to my local watering hole for a glass of wine and got that plus the leftovers of all their blended drinks. Good thing it's in stumbling distance from home.
Jr&O: I have checked out pioneer woman off and on. I should put her in my sidebar so I remember it more often. I started posting a lot more pictures here after being inspired by her.
AH: I'm open to blind dates. Emails, check!
Beki: Yep. After checking the board daily for going on 5 years or so, I imagine there will be some phantom limb pains after the amputation scabs over and I'm off the painkillers...
UMM: I haven't found any other place like the Suz board. This is the longest I've ever known such a large community of friends and acquaintances to be both friendly and civil (recent events excluded) and fun and quirky. I got a lot of the best things in my life from the board. Now what?
MBC: Yeah, it felt like it was starting to even out again. But apparently there was enough residual poison that too many people had no faith that the board would be operated in good faith. And you can't really overcome that without kicking them all out, which was kind of antithetical to the whole thing. Drat and double drat anyway.
Anon: word. (We can still say that, right? Crap, now where do I get my new slang?)
Well, keep commenting and I'll let you know if I run across anything good (check thru my sidebar, it's not so bad). One colleague at work suggested I roll over my old 201K into an IRA and start market timing during this period of volatility. I'm tempted. I'm a little tired of my balance hitting a nice even number only to have the market crash and build it back up only to have the market crash. Sheesh. I'm only about $10K ahead of sticking money under a mattress.
My advice to the people who spent so much time hating on a book they hadn't read yet was to find something else they liked to do and do that. Now I get to find something else I like to do and do that.
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