”And do you know the surest way to go broke?... Keep getting an increasing share of a shrinking market….Down the tubes, slow but sure.”
”You know, at one time...there must have been dozens of companies making buggy whips…. And I’ll bet that last company was the one that made the best goddamn buggy whip you ever saw.”
”Now, how would have liked to have been a stockholder in that company?”
That little gem was from Danny Devito in a scene from a movie called “Other People’s Money”.
Maybe that quote explains the logic surrounding my recent decision to step down from the admin group. Maybe, through a series of miscalculations and good intentions the staff here has promised more than it can deliver. As for me, I was just getting tired of explaining ourselves to individual noders who actually believed what I outlined in my July 2007 editor log and that was further documented in News for Noders.
I was tired of the recent spate of server errors, lag time and slow page loads. I was tired of being told to “be nice” to certain individuals who seemed to have claimed the c-box as their own personal playground.
I was tired of the endless streams of nodes about noding, the merit system, xp and so on and so on. I was tired of the squabbles both big and small regarding the conduct of certain users and how they should best be dealt with. I was tired because if votes are any indication, it gets a bit discouraging to pour yourself into a write up only to discover that only about thirty other people might read it.
I was tired because over the years I had invested on awful lot of myself into this place in the hopes that one day it would pay off and we would be the envy of the internet.
I consider myself a passionate person. I work hard, play hard and throw myself headfirst into things I have no business getting into. Maybe that’s the reason I’ve decided to step down.
See, in my twisted mind, I’m doing so because I care too much about this place and can’t justify myself or my place in it anymore.
I feel a little bit like Janis singing (make that "belting out") the lyrics to "Piece of My Heart".
It fuckin’ hurts.
To use a sports analogy, I feel like the aging veteran who gets to sit on the sidelines while his understudies are out on the playing field. Who knows, maybe I still have it in me to come off the bench and make a play every now and then? Some of them might even be good and some will probably suck but that’s okay. I’ve heard the cheers and faced the boos before and I’m sure I can do it again. In the end though, we’re all forced to retire.
Unlike the athlete that’s past his or her prime and winds up embarrassing themselves in front of their peers, I’m choosing to go out while there’s still some time left on the clock.
All the best,
Borgo