People bemuse me. There are so many folks out in the world who make it their life’s work to dwell in anger and misery, and to dole out the same to anyone who crosses their path. Who wants to live like that? It must be a very ugly place to be – and it makes them ugly people.
When I posted my blog last night, I had the fleeting thought that the topic could cause some genuine thought and conversation among my friends, students, and customers. Copyright law and copyright ethics are a hot topic in the beading world, and rightfully so. There’s a lot of gray area in how the laws are interpreted, and that’s why it’s important to come together as a community to reach a common understanding of what’s right and what’s wrong.
So what did I get in my email today? A scathing and angry comment left for my blog from “Anonymous.” Happily, I already had the blog set up so I have to approve all comments on the blog before they are posted. Naturally, I didn’t approve this one. Anonymous was brave enough to call me “ignorant” and quote copyright law to me, but not brave enough to do it under their own identity. Well, fine. That says a lot about you right there.
It’s hurtful to me for so many reasons. First of all, I imagine this blog to be a window into the life and times of a beading designer/teacher…whatever you want to call me. I try to incorporate a lot of the process behind the resulting public identity here – I explain all the various deadlines and crazy things required – I confess when I’m hopelessly unorganized and have lazy days – and I also tell ya’ll about the mental conversations I have when I’m designing a piece. And that’s what yesterday’s blog was all about. You’ll notice I didn’t post a photo of the project I was working on. And the reason was I knew in my heart that it wasn’t my own yet. I need to keep playing with the technique and variations and incorporating other bits and pieces with it before I can let it see daylight.
Instead of taking it that way, Anonymous chose to jump in and thump me on the head for being stupid enough to actually talk about the process publicly. Huh?
I choose to not allow such negativity into my life again if I can help it, and I have decided to eliminate the comment option on the blog. Any of the folks I care to hear from know how to reach me anyway, and I hope I continue to do so. The evil ones can also find me easily, but they’ll have to work a little harder to invade my world. I’m sorry this one person has caused me to react – that’s just what Anonymous wanted. I debated for most of the day on this. But ultimately, as Mom reminded me tonight, there’s no one person out there that EVERYONE likes. And that’s okay.