When I got home late Thursday and opened up my pc, I found an email in my 'boards' email account. It was from DKos letting me know that someone generously purchased a lifetime subscription for me. I think I have some ideas as to who it might be, but I'm not going to say because I could very well be wrong and I don't want to hurt the feelings of the one who actually made the purchase.
I'm at a loss for words as to why someone would do this for me. It's not like I have the ability to write thought provoking diaries, or even a yearly one about the state of politics in the State I live. I enter the threads/diaries of people that I've found to have written excellent diaries on topics of interest in the past and are writing on them again. I don't often submit a reply to many of them because it seems that others have written what I wanted to say, or the conversation is moving faster than I feel I can read/type to and contribute to the conversation.
But what I can say is that if it weren't for certain people on this site, I might not have made it through my troubled times of the past few years. If it weren't for Chronic Tonic and WYFP threads, where people offered their shoulder, commiseration, and support those times may have been much worse than they were. There were a few that PM me to check on me and what not. There were a few that told me to give them a call, or requested my phone number and called to 'talk'.
Since someone thought I have contributed something to this community, I promise to try to keep on keeping on with what I do on this site. I would like to say that I would become more involved, but I can't. I can't promise something I don't know that I can carry through on.
To be honest, the someone purchased the subscription on Monday. I didn't read the email until Thursday night and then I had a bunch of errands to run Friday. I don't open up that email account unless I'm at home and since mid November, I'm not at my home from Sunday evening to Thursday evening because of job I found and received. I have chosen to work 4 10's so that I can be home for a little more time instead of sitting in an empty apartment in a town that I don't know.
I was offered a contract position with a major company in the next state over. It's a 12-18 month contract and absolutely no maybe's attached. I like my house. I like where I live. My dad is here in town and he's getting up there in age. He's done so much for me that I owe him what assistance I can give when he needs it (hauling stuff up and down the basement, organizing the tupperware drawer, cleaning up the extra bedroom from time to time, etc). There is other family and friends here that I don't want to leave behind. So, I've refused to move lock, stock, and barrel for this temporary job.
The job itself has been very kind to me so far. I think things are going well. There are new tools to me to learn and they don't seem to mind that I need to learn them - most have to deal with version control and database information. They recognize that there is more than one version control program out there, they're glad that I understand what version control is about. The database stuff is interesting. I've never had this type of access to look at so much of the 'guts' of DB2 database construction and maintenance. I'm learning this new tool pretty quickly and they get that. We've also talked about what my actual experience with databases have been. They're glad that there's someone else that has a clue what an IMS database structure is (I've had a couple of database administrators ask me what an IMS database was as they've never heard of it.) and that I've also gone through IMS to DB2 conversions before.
So, I'm working 4 10's.... It doesn't leave a whole lot of time in the evenings for much more than dinner, try to catch up with the emails, goings on here and other sites I frequent before I'm about to fall over into sleep. I just hope that I get used to the mattress on the twin bed quickly so that I can get better sleep over there as that's contributing to my lack of doing much after work.
When I saw the goings on over the last week or so and the names of people given subscriptions, I was thinking yes, this person has written many excellent diaries in the past and I thought that they've contributed to the community as a whole. They're active people on the site and 'earned' the subscription. So, it was a great surprise to find that I was also gifted. Wednesday, I saw NurseKelley's post about wanting to set up a place where people who wanted to gift others, but didn't have the funds for a full subscription, that a pool would be collected and members gifted. I thought this was a fabulous idea and planned on donating a little bit. Since I'm trying to rebuild after 22.5 months of unemployment, I still need to be careful of my funds. But, I wanted to help a bit - that's what I like about the Pine Reservation drives, money can be pooled to help out instead of all or nothing. So, I'm eagerly waiting for the post to show up where we can pool funds to gift some other members of this site.
Thank you one and all for all your support. There just aren't enough words to thank you.