My opinion here means close to nothing. However, the pub’s description is:

“Exploring & Celebrating What it Means to be Human. Together.”

It further goes to explain,

“We write down our mess, that we may marvel in what is same about us, wonder about what is different & embrace one another anyway without condition.”

Wow.

So to have someone come here and express frustration around editing the mess is foreign to me. To have someone go further to express such a childish backstabbing ripping apart of others’ perhaps most tender thoughts?

Wow.

I was asked by one of the editors whether they could include one of my pieces in that pub. Which, you know, I was fine with. I’d probably always be fine with it. To be honest, I’m not technologically inclined in the way that I’m not patient enough to mess with Medium’s fussiness interacting with one browser and not another or the way my iPhone must relaunch the app before updating notifications and completely restart before it will push messages out. I’m not savvy enough or brave enough or on-time-enough to commit to the any-number-of amazing writing prompts and pubs that pop up in my feed that I cannot wait to consume every week, like the Knobsters. You know the ones.

I just cannot. Because I am afraid to fail. I am afraid because I feel that I have already poured out just the right amount of red on the page with my own blood, and I couldn’t stand for another drop to land there, put there by another. Would it fix it? Yes. Most certainly. Would it ruin it? Yes. Most certainly.

This Glorious Mess doesn’t try to be something it’s not. They’re a mess. You know that up front. It’s literally in the name of the pub. I’m not any part of it, but I enjoy everything, every time. Thank you to those who are staying.