I don't intend for this to be a flame. And it's not a personality attack. I don't recall ever having good or bad feeling for mt2k.

But I find this post, in and of itself to be childish. "Look at me! I'm leaving!" You want to leave, leave. Do you want people to stop you? Do you want people to lament your absense? If that the case, it'll never happen - because the way you left is not noble.

Many of us want tilly back. He was forced to make a difficult decision and leave. He said a public good-bye so that others could learn from what befell him. Many of us want Abigail back. He was embarrassed into leaving, his good-bye taught us a lesson. I remember that jcwren left for a time because certain members of the community hacked and messed up the free service he provides for us. There's many lessons there. Too many to summarize.

When I left this site, I didn't bother to say good-bye. I just left. And because there was no lesson to be learned, I kept my mouth shut, updated my homenode "Location" to "Gone" so no one would expect any activity from me and simply LEFT. And I didn't bother looking at the site for weeks - and then, when I did, it was only to do research.

One could argue that your good-bye could teach us a lesson about growing as an individual. I could equally argue that it shows us how little you've grown. To me, it is an immature and selfish act to draw attention to yourself simply for the sake of drawing attention to yourself. To me, it is an immature and selfish act to erase a piece of important history from this site.

And a part of me believes that you're watching this thread as Anonymous Monk. And if that's the case, I hope that what you will learn from my post is that being missed is earned, and not forced. If you had stayed longer, I'm sure you would have earned that priviledge.

PS. I usually only post and visit for technical reasons (and before you ask, yes, I donate regularly). And for the record when I left, I didn't hang around to see if I was missed. I know I wasn't, because I never earned that priviledge.