Cutting out for Keeps

Imagine this: you go to a company's headquarters to give a talk on Business ethics. While you're on the podium, glancing out the window, you see the manager in charge of accounts receivable out in the parking lot, trying to get your hubcaps loose. You feel somebody brushing against your hip; somebody in human resources is trying to pick your pocket. As you interrupt your speech and try to get a hold of the CEO and see if he can restrain his people a little bit, you notice that he's just cracked open your briefcase and is rifling through your credit cards, while scolding you out loud for being so judgmental as to mind. Tell me - what is the likelihood of your deciding to continue that speech on ethics, and if you did decide to continue it, who could your intended audience possibly be at that point? The story in the parting post on my personal blog gets a little involved, but the absurdity of the hypothetical situation I posed is the absurdity of the situation I faced, and it has been far too many times in my dealings with the Pagan community. I guess you could say this one was that one time too many; a mature philosophical discussion of ethics is at the core of what I was attempting, and Pagandom, with a tiny handful of exceptions lost and buffeted around in the boisterous crowd, just doesn't offer an audience appropriate for the material. If you were one of the people who wanted to know when there were going to be further updates to the Almond Jar, as I announced on one of the pages on that site, there won't be any. I guess you could say that I'm discouraged but not disheartened, as I do have other places to me. More time spent doing Mathematics and Engineering, playing with my nieces and nephews, working on my recipes, spending time with my friends ... doesn't sound like much of a loss. Life will be growing more rich for me, not less, to say nothing of more prosperous, as the drain on my time that being "Antistoicus" involved was hardly boosting my income, any more than it was improving my mood, as I was one of those strange people who never tried to turn religion into a business. Were I sacrificing on behalf of a community that gave the gods good reason to feel glad for their worship, I might not mind the loss because it would be the price of something serving the greater good, but after a few years of bashing one's head into the wall, as a friend of mine is fond of saying, one should be prepared to conclude that the wall isn't what is likely to give way. Further sacrifice would be for nothing.