The real value I find here is....you

        A good friend is leaving Mindsay. It happens. Sometimes, a thing like this can take up too much time or energy. I have, from time to time, considered it myself. I haven't because I consider it a net plus in my life, despite seeing some of the same cited reasons for leaving as my friend.

I have learned not to get sucked into the obvious and futile lairs of the professional debaters. Even if I know I could represent the opposite point of view with rationality and vigor. It's futile. Nothing would change but my energy level. I have fallen through the trap door and heard the wind whistling past my ears more than enough times to leave the raw meat lying on the floor of Top Blogs.

Instead, I have concentrated this year on making Mindsay what I had hoped it would be for me and I think, for the most part, I'm succeeding. I have gathered to me a group of truly fine folks that I list in my network and I find sharing whatever level of discovery these folks feel like sharing to be just fine with me. It is, after all, a social networking site and I have so far this year expanded it by about 30%. A great many of these people are local and I have actually met a couple. For even the ones in distant states, I hold hope of traveling to the places they describe and hosting them in my own slice of the good land.

While I have noticed alot of mindsay-fatigue this year and the contentiousness and rudeness of some have come and gone or continue, I would say that I have better hopes for what this little site provides than I have since I joined in 2005. I think my expectations are more realistic. It certainly isn't for the ease of the features or the sometimes technically frustrating glitches that I stay, it's for those who are on my network list who have, in one way or another, intrigued, informed, laughed or cried and shared with Beloved and myself. There will be even more, I hope.

It may come to a time when I will leave here too. If I ever do, it will most probably not be because of drama or rudeness or other boorish behaviors. I can identify and avoid those. It will happen when those whom I have come to regard as friends and wish to cultivate and share both virtual and real time with become ambivalent or indifferent to me and the notion of sharing a laugh, or a recipe, or a set of photos or a bench at a ballgame.

I hope that day doesn't come.