See, I’ve only been back to blogging for a week and I’m already behind.
I was going to try and update the blog here semi-regularly (like every Tuesday and Saturday), but it only took one week for that plan to fail. Which is odd, considering how much I love to write. Maybe it’s some sort of writer’s fatigue – I don’t know, maybe that’s a subject for another post.
The subject of this post, however, is what it is – specifically – that keeps me at the Captain’s Chair here at SCN. As I’ve written before in my many editorials, meeting some of these amazing people and getting nice email are two of the main reasons I continue, week after week, to publish news and commentary on my site. In the past two weeks, I received more nice email, the personal kind that I don’t normally share with my readers. But for the purposes of this blog entry, I’ll make an exception.
The first nice email came from Brenda Sinser, the homeless woman in Abbotsford we have been profiling for months. She sent me an email to let me know that she had managed to make from the outdoors to the indoors. I’d like now to share with you a small bit of her email:
I have met a wonderful new man that has the wonderful ability, just like you it seems, to put me in a comfort zone to open my soul and let him see in. He has been a lifesaver in more ways than one. Denise truly has been the saviour of me, mind, body, and soul. I cannot express in words what she has done for me, and I believe in my heart that without her coming into my life at the point when she did, I may not have survived at all. You had no idea at the time, but you facilitated what might have been the catalyst to my very survival, as I was not in good shape mentally at that time, and for the first time I was doubtful of my survival.
It’s a nice email from someone who doesn’t mince her words. During my interview with her, she credited me (unfairly, I believe) with saving her life, stating she saw my face just before she drove her bike into oncoming traffic. She says a big part of the reason she turned her life around was because of me, but I tend to think it was because she knew she needed to – not for me, but for her son and, most importantly, herself. Still, her words were nice to hear.
I also got another letter this week from a supporter of Tim Felger’s. This is part of that email:
Just read your article on Felger that's posted right now. Please let Tim know that I actually care. It is very unfortunate that people tend to dismiss Tim as a crackpot or what have you.At any rate, if you could let Tim know that he's not alone and that I actually appreciate the dialogue he creates, even if it isn't always recognized as such. |
This is the kind of email that proves that, however small, we are making a difference. Not that I need some sort of validation that what I am doing is right or worthwhile, but it’s always nice to see some results after so much work.
So when people ask me why I still create new issues of SCN week after week even though I make no money from doing so and have surrendered a lot of of my social life and spend a lot of time in front of my computer alone in my room – my answer remains the same: there’s nothing else in the world quite like what I do and I wouldn’t trade it for anything.