Last week I wrote about an incident that happened with me and my wife. Today I deleted it.

Here’s why.

Without rehashing the whole situation and rewriting the original article, my wife and I felt very strongly we were being improperly treated by an employee of an established business, with my personal thoughts & feelings ranging from minor preferential treatment to good ol’ fashioned Jim Crow.

The article, while exposing a clear communication issue within the business and extremely poor handling of VIP customers, was simultaneously the most negative thing I’ve ever created in my entire life.

A LOT of people saw what I wrote. I occasionally write articles on design and technology that do okay within the niche channels I share them in. The article I wrote had the same potential reach as anything else I’ve ever posted online, however, that lone article generated more views in its first 24 hours than several things I’ve written, which have been circulating online for the past few years. Combined.

But that’s not the point.

Nearly everyone I know who attended the event where the incident took place had an amazing time that night. I was there, the show kicked-ass (minus two sound cuts). My article, however, casted a negative shadow on the event (and more or less, the venue), shading the memories of that night for some of those people.

That was never my intention.

A single, shitty experience for me and my wife was becoming a tainted memory for anyone who knew me, who happened to be there, and happened to check Facebook or Medium 24 hours later, and my post happened to make it into their feed. Or someone shared it with them.

The thing is, anyone who knows me knows what I wrote was absolutely the last type of thing they would ever hear me talk about or mention. That’s just not me.

I’m fortunate enough to live in a place and time where conflicts of this variety happen to me so infrequently, to be virtually non-existent.

So when my wife or I feel like we’re being mistreated, there’s a legitimate, non-biased reason; 99.999% of the time, it’s a miscommunication issue. If I wrote an article for every miscommunication issue I’ve had, I’d be the most published person YOU know, without a doubt. I simply refuse to believe things happen to me because of what I look like, but because, sometimes, shit just happens.

…except when shit doesn't make sense.

And you know what I’m talking about. You know when things don’t feel right. And maybe in this one instance, even though I personally don’t see it, my background and underlying bias is tinting my perspective, even if only a little bit, causing me to grasp at straws.

But anyone who assumes or believes talking about racial issues publicly is pleasant, is absolutely incorrect.

It’s extremely uncomfortable. For everyone. It personally makes me feel awkward and my hands start to sweat.

But I know what I saw and felt that night.

So I wrote a ~2,500 word piece of non-fiction, colored in emotion from a first person narrative. I never mentioned the word ‘race’ or ‘racist’, or anyones color for that matter (except for the picture-proof of the guy in question). I used the word ‘complexion’ once, and there was one paragraph at the end about microaggressions, which is more about general bias than it is about racism. Anything else you gleaned from it required some context and empathy. And that was the point.

Some people immediately understood exactly where I was coming from and were compassionate. Many benign, indifferent. A few *gnats had quickly summed up my situation in 140 characters or less to be petty bitching.

Donald Trump was, at one point, the leading republican candidate for the 2016 United States presidential elections. I’m clearly not going to understand everyone in this world.

I spoke with the guy later; I was still upset, but he did apologize for what happened (we can debate whether or not it was a sincere apology, but the fact that it happened was something) and I even managed to apologize for calling him an asshole and putting him on blast by the end.

Me writing that original article didn’t provide me or my wife any real resolution. It’s not like we recieved bad food at a restaurant and tried to send it back for something else. Meeting the guy and subsequently deleting that article did. I feel much better now that it’s down and the negative energy from what I created is no longer reverberating around me throughout the internets.

But I don’t feel great about how reading that article impacted others experience, spreading that energy, after the fact. So, THIS is closure, for everyone.

Shit happens. Let’s move on.

Happy #BHM2016