I caught some flak from readers two weeks ago when I temporarily pruned this site. I was interviewing at Vulcan at the time. I knew they did background checks, and with six years of cantankerous bitching immortalized here forever, there is surely, by now, something to offend everyone. It seemed prudent to limit the site to just the last few weeks' entries. I put up a note over the weekend, then truncated the site Monday morning. And then the accusations of hypocrisy began. Any stand worth taking is a stand worth keeping, any employer worth working for won't mind, you have no courage behind your convictions, and so forth.
Horseplop.
A cardinal rule governing my life is to never violate a trust I want to keep. It's a matter of honor, yes, but it's also eminently practical. In blog as in life, anyone (or any job) I torch here is someone I've already decided doesn't matter, whose esteem I do not value. Torching someone whose esteem I don't value—no coincidence, that. By definition, then, their reaction is of no gravity to me. On very few occasions, some folks have come to matter, and on those occasions I've even been known to hunt down and eliminate old posts. Now. Cut to Vulcan. Until I got to know them better, they mattered. Until they no longer mattered, why on earth would I poke them with a stick? Out of an overdeveloped, self-sacrificing sense of rebelliousness? Fuck that noise. This is my site. Give away your own money on your own site.