Let me start by saying, that last autumn I surprised myself with the kind of behaviour I was capable of. I mean the way I went ballistic in some discussions, showed paranoid levels of untrust, and the general amount of poison I was spraying around in various occasions. I’m still deeply ashamed of that.
I did apologize at the time, but not enough. And I know that there is no amount of apologizing, that would “set things straight” in a sense that everything would be healed. At least not in a way that I would be seen as the same person I was seen as before going way overboard. That’s painful, but also right at same time. That’s how it goes. I have shown (and found out myself) what I am capable of. It’s taken some work to own and digest that, and trying to behave better. And still, I cannot guarantee, that it would not happen again. I’ve found out, that maybe I don’t know myself so well after all.
But @dirvine, please know, that I see what I have done, and try to do better in the future.
Still, I need to point out something:
I think that it is not just a feeling, but reflects factual circumstances.
The division between the team and the community is factually larger than it used to be before last spring and that division stems from the team closing in much more.
Then there was that murky something we didn’t know about, but that somehow loomed above everything, and that I now think was the cancer.
We all have some pressures and I hope understanding for all.
But looking back the last year, the situation where the team and all individuals in it were, when you became ill, is quite unimaginable. There’s of course the organizational challenges, when you as the key player are not there, and then all the worry and fear the people who knew you and the situation must have felt. All at the time, when things were taking new direction etc. Thinking about that, it is truly a wonder to be in a place we are now. And of course the recovery from that also takes time. For you, and everybody around you.
I think that I personally might have behaved differently, if I had known what you, and by proxy the team, were going through. Differently, not necessarily better. And I think it was better for me personally, that I didn’t know - but maybe not better for the role I have been playing in this community. Then again, your health and life is in a certain sense no one elses business, and I hope that the distance you kept served you well. That’s the most important thing, after all, and the decision to do so is for no one else to judge.
I’ve seen cancer from close distance (not had it myself), and cancer sucks. There is no way to go through it without consequences, deep and wide, also in the folks around the sick one. I mean, we can say that this and that should have been done so and so, but all the vectors the cancer is throwing out in every level is something no one can do anything about it. Everyone goes through it the way they do, there’s no right or wrong there, and only a fool would judge anyone else about how they are doing it.
And still, we should be able to talk and debate about the decisions and solutions done in that difficult time, relating to this wonderful network we are brewing here. I just wish that, now that we know, we could all see that there has been an uninvited guest in the process, making everything so much harder.
So, from my part, I wish the past is past. It never completely is, but as much as possible.
yes - the network needs to run smoothly
