02/10/11 - 6:52 p.m.

I felt bad. I wrote something for a web site. They deleted it.

The truth is, there were a bunch of mis-steps along the way. The 60-something guy who started the process told me later he shouldn't have. The person he reported my article to was unsure, and while they gave me a chance to respond, my response wasn't delivered -- a technical glitch. So the deletion process continued...

But honestly, going through all those steps sidesteps why I'm really mad. Right or wrong, they shouldn't be axing what I wrote. I'm submitting my expressions. It's one man's opinion -- and an honest opinion, carefully expressed. I've spent hundreds of hours writing for that web site. It was a good experience. It feels like that's what they're violating.

And it's even more crucial, because I'd already decided to retire from the site. I just wanted to leave my body of work behind. So they were attacking my legacy. My resting place. After hundreds of hours, where I had left things.

I just didn't know that they could retroactively rescind publication like that...

I should probably recognize that it was a strange conflagration of circumstances which is unlikely to occur again. That is, I shouldn't be extrapolating from obvious one-time flukes. That's really why I came here to write - to try to figure out why I can't let this go. I wonder if it's something biochemical -- if a lack of sleep or winter blahs makes me more obsessive?

I had some fun things I wanted to do tonight. But the anger is still there.


LATER: I actually do feel a little better. It was when I imagined describing this to a friend of mine. And I realized I could describe it, succinctly. I was clear, inside myself, that I had not made a mistake. Somehow that does make me feel better. I think I also made the error of thinking that this deletion somehow "meant something." What I should've done is recognize that: it was a mistake. That they took this mistake all the way, and actually axed a perfectly good article. I mean, I could forgive an honest mistake.

I actually spent a piece of today trying to get someone at the web site to just admit that it was a mistake (and say they're sorry). But I guess that's giving them too much power.

Because I already know....