It was a relatively slow day yesterday. Good, in a way, because I had a lot to think about. The house is just about ready to be put up on the market, and we'll be calling an appraiser before the end of the week. I have no sure-fire prospects for employment, despite promising leads, and that's driving me crazy. I'm a real bear to be around lately, and it's been affecting the way I interact with people. That's pretty bad, because even at the best of times, I'm no social butterfly.

Very much a loner, self-sufficient, and until recently, gainfully employed, I've really led a pretty charmed life. Despite the stark contrast between the life I had been leading, and the financial hardships I now face, I am still much better off, apparently, than others who have endured far harsher realities for far longer. And my apparent lack of understanding - or ability to relate - has (among other things) resulted in these people finally saying "enough". Enough insensitivity, enough "holier than thou" attitude.

Had I been warned that there was trouble brewing? Yes, I had been told that certain things I had said were hurtful - though I didn't think so at the time. How was I to know that phrases such as "how are you" or "I saw my doctor today" could be deemed offensive to someone? I thought I had taken those feelings into consideration and modified my behaviour, both in the things I said, and the things I didn't say.

The one topic I did discuss in the chatroom - one I will not discuss on the blog - is the stormy relationship between myself and a family member. I have been venomous at times on this issue, thinking that I was among friends in a relatively private forum. This inner anger has apparently been an emotional burden on the chatroom regulars. If I've learned anything, it's that this issue (or any other that really pushes my buttons) is not an appropriate topic for heated chatroom or blog discussion. I ask that any rebuttals to this post not get into details about this situation, as it is in the process of being mended.

Sometimes, it became difficult to know just what to say in the chatroom, for fear of causing offense. So over time, I retreated... retreated to the safety of meaningless trivia, impersonal communication and limited time in one-on-one chatroom contact. I retreated to offline communication, carefully crafted so as not to break any of the unspoken rules. And even then, I seemed to find ways of offending people.

How is it that a common practice in blogland, where one person posts an entry based on inspiration from someone else's blog, becomes so wrong when I do it, specially when credit is given to the source of my inspiration?

Have you ever visited a site, and picked up one of their buttons to use as a link back to their site? Who hasn't - it's standard practice... Well, I recently started assembling links to places on the web that feature outstanding artwork. I wanted to draw people's attention to someone's artwork, and asked whether they had a gif available for the link - one designed by them that would be representative of their work. The response was not exactly what I had expected:

get your own damned content, and stop assuming that others will be happy to do your work for you

Apparently, this last request, coupled with other recent crimes and misdemeanors (like trying three times to post a text+picture entry on a guestmap before realizing that guestmap has a bug) was enough to incur the wrath of my chathost. My zeal to discover the cause of and workaround to this bug earned me a charge of "spamming of guestbooks/maps".

I debated whether I should post any of this crap. Ideally, the best place for it would have been in direct response to the original posts. Unfortunately, I have been banned from posting rebuttal comments. I considered just letting the issue die (after all, these posts scroll off over time), but that's not in my nature. I don't necessarily have to have the last word, but I do have to have some opportunity to post "my side" of the story.

I take full responsibility for offending certain persons. How can I deny it in the face of such vehement accusations? Just understand that it was never intentional. I'm not happy that I caused so much grief as to be banned from a chatroom - any chatroom - but I'll find a new one to call home. And I will continue to allow comments to my blog, since that appears to be the only way that both sides of the debate can appear on a single page.

In the end, I guess I'm hoping that others, not directly affected by this whole mess, will judge my character based on their own experiences, and not on the experiences of others.