I was considering leaving the
database for about six weeks, I had become literally sick (
strep throat,) and tired (work related
fatigue,) and the last thing I wanted to deal with was a bunch of goons who have nothing better to do with their time than screw with other
people. I went so far as to publicly proclaim my decision to depart, got good and
mad and set down to draft an e-mail to
bones in effect asking for the deletion of my
user account.
At four in the morning with the red vision of ire clouding everything that I wrote I slammed my hands into the keyboard and shut the machine down. I could not convey the acidic
irritation, the blinding
rage, the absolute
fury that I was feeling at the time with sufficient verbal force. I wanted to shoot my monitor and throw it off the side of my apartment building.
These dumb fuckers.
No goddamn respect, no fucking code. Learn them good, I'll quit.
I slept on it, woke up the next day and sat down again to finish penning the final missive that would absolve me of any responsibility. Why it was that I had decided to quit, why it was that I was not running away, why it was that this was a good idea and everyone else could kiss my ass.
Again the same problem, I could curse and swear all I wanted but it wasn't going to justify the decision. In the end when I signed on for the first time here I understood that a certain responsibility had been engendered in me by the people that I was planning on lambasting via e-mail, a responsibility that I was currently failing to take seriously by quitting out of shallow momentary frustration.
Yes, getting
downvoted sucks. Especially when you spend three or four hours banging out a page and a half of text that sums up so much of your soul that it makes
you want to cry. This is what
XP stoicism is for.
Yes, getting blasted in the chatterbox sucks. This is why you can turn it off from 'preferences.'
Yes, you can quit. Before you do, I'd recommend you sit down. Think back to the first time you were
C!'d, the first node you wrote, how far you have come since then. Finding one's
motivation again may be as simple as taking a vacation for a few days/weeks, or just walking away for a little while.
Realize that Node for the Ages is not a joke. Understand that if you choose to fill the database with garbage, you will not benefit. Comprehend that once you create a new user, you are asking permission to begin a relationship that will last tens of years. If you like, look at starting here like having a child. You want to be a thorougly hated absentee parent?
Quit.
But the editors and everyone else are at fault for your failure?
Wrong. You are.
No one made you quit, no one made life that bad. No one showed up and started picketing around the front of your residence about the formatting of your last node.
If you decide to go, you will do so on your own.