It's been a while, MLR. I see things have really shaped up and gotten better since I've left. I'm glad the administrative team has been so dedicated to answering your feature requests. The new look is cute.
There was an incident that involved an altercation between administrators. People have gotten a side of the story and honestly it's not too far from the truth, Freewave is if anything an honest individual, so we'll leave it at that story and hopefully find a way to focus on restoring friendships and rebuilding bridges instead (although I won't be too shocked if people are still holding on to justified concerns on the matter).
What I'm getting at is that I reunited with the admins of MLR a few days ago to express my apologies to how I acted and how I treated them, and in return they have offered their own apologies and accepted mine. As far as MLR's administrators are concerned, I am a part of the family, again. I'm asking the same of the musician community. We've had disagreements and I've overreacted in manners that weren't civil. I've pushed everyone away and distanced myself from people, which is certainly not what any of you deserved, and even though distance was what I needed at the time, I still apologize because I know it had hurt some. I think it's honestly best if we didn't let just subjects of politics or arguments ruin relationships within a community. Like the show says, friendship isn't easy, and I'm willing to accept an impass and come to an understanding, that you and me might agree to disagree, but what doesn't change is our friendship.
I know this sounds like a non-apology. It's true, I don't apologize for my stance on the issues I had. I still believe I was in the right. But I am apologizing for behavior that was clearly unacceptable, especially when in a leader's position. I am not resuming administrator status for the community. Frankly, I've been neglectful of the community and it's better under Freewave, Kyoga, and Makkon's involvement, along with the moderators of the site. They're a very strong team, and even though we had disagreements, I'm still proud of how they kept up the community.
So maybe people are wondering what happened to me. How did it get to this point? A lot of it had to do with passion for preserving friendships, a lot of hurt, some betrayal, but most of it came from poisoned thinking. If I spent this whole post describing exactly what went wrong, this would be one of the longest posts on the site, for certain. It's better to just let the water flow under the bridge, so let's just continue with what I've learned.
Sometimes a person develops a dark mind from failed attempts to make friendships last, and it happened to me, and I've been fighting this toxic influence on my thinking. I had been afraid of the moment that friends would leave me since day one. When I was in school before ponies, I hoped for friends, but it didn't stick. Online was where it was at. And I miss those friends. I missed those friends so bad, I didn't want to make new ones until I was sure that my old friends would stick. The lesson I learned: You have to let them go, and let yourself go, because you deserve peace.
I have been fighting this dark mind for a while. Fights happened, arguments got too heated. But I found solace in doing good. So I spent a lot of time on tumblr learning progressive concepts like privilege and understanding sexism and etc etc. What I will tell you is that these things, as someone who has been in the "social justice" side of the community, that these are great things to learn, but be aware of the dark side of it. You all probably already know. It's nothing that feminism or any of the other concepts do to *you.* No, this was something that I did to myself.
"Callout Culture" is the name of a distorted form of thinking where you are addicted to a rush of calling people out. Sometimes you can pick a battle, but 99 times out of 100, just message them privately to have a conversation on Skype like calm people. That's what I've learned. When I became addicted to getting on the pedestal and soapboxing about issues, that's where things started to go downhill. First of all, getting on the soapbox drives attention to you. A friend once told me to never argue with an idiot, for they will use their stupidity to beat you down. That's the kind of people soapboxing brings about. It's a case-by-case thing, but 99% of the time, it's better to talk one-on-one and save the drama. I am working on this right now, and I won't ask for administrator status until I'm sure that I've unwound myself from this issue.
The second part of Callout Culture is how it can minimize your friend circle. When your friends say things that can be called out, it's obvious to you, but shredding your friends about it, especially on the podium, is a good way to turn a friendship sour. For example, I had distanced myself from StevenAD over some minor thing he said, and frankly, fuck yeah, I want him back. I am guilty of this problem on so many counts that it has rendered some friendships impossible to rebuild, which is sad, and I've very simply ruined a lot of potential futures with people I honestly cared about. I got so infected with this bad behavior pattern that I nearly ousted some of my closest friends, and at that point, I had realized something really was wrong. It took me a long time to realize that something in me was out of skew and I had to fix it. Your friends are the people who can save you, so don't ever give up on them.
A recent thing I've learned is that even if it seems that all of the drama is in front of you out in the open, it is still possible to use careful, considerate, one-on-one talking to make an issue right and make a friendship stronger instead of falling into Callout Culture and villifying one side. I did this to Cyril on a misunderstanding, and I realized I was being mean, so I apologized. I wanted it to make me feel better, but that wasn't enough. Something caused me to take the wrong action and that was the root of the problem. If you see drama, everyone wants to turn away from it, but for those of you who want to help, the best possible thing you can do is what I've learned to do today. In the case of drama/arguments, always always always put yourself in the mentality of mending friendships. Do *not* pretend that problems don't exist like nothing is wrong. Carefully and kindly face the problem by bringing it up with a friend. "I saw you posted that, do you wanna talk about it?"
So many aspects of my poisoned thinking are beginning to crack. I turned into a monster, of sorts, and I left so that I wouldn't hurt more people in the process. I'm slowly getting better, but in case you undergo the same problems I faced, here's information I would like to pass on to make everything easier for you.
Back to the subject of apologies, I'll close with a blanket apology to all that I've hurt, offended, and abandoned in my departure, negligence, and abuse. I was wrong, very wrong, and I understand if you no longer feel I deserve friendship. I just hope you understand that at this moment I care more about people understanding how much I recognize their feelings and the consequences of my actions. I did a lot of terrible things to close friends and decent people. I hope to make as much better as possible. I don't intend on being an up-and-down drama type; I am going to be adhering to that advice I listed above. Furthermore, I intend on giving my responses more time so that they come out as more properly thought-through and logical, more all-encompassing and considerate. I had always prided myself on being level-headed and self-improving. I apologize for failing you and for failing myself. I slipped into something dark and I'm on my way out. So I'm sorry, and thank you for your time.
PS: Dino says hello.
PSS: Another lesson: Always good to have a close friend to vent to, for those moments when the outrage is high, haha.