Goodbye 04-05-05

In
any case, when I began posting "The Boron Letters" on my
website, I wasn't getting my normal flow of feedback. So I
sent a short e-mail message to my announcement list
basically asking, "Hey, is there anybody out there paying
attention to these letters? Am I wasting my time posting
them?"

Shortly after that, I was having a "bad hair day" and
Theresa (without my knowledge) wrote to my announcement list
an e-mail saying I could use a bit of cheering up. She said
maybe some of my readers could send me an e-mail to brighten
my spirits.

In
any case, these two particular announcements created the
first flood of e-mails to me. And when I say "flood" I mean
a torrent of e-mails.

A
few people even asked me if Theresa's writing about me
having a bad hair day was some sort of marketing trick. That
maybe I was using it to set people up to sell them
something. That was very few people but still, it irritated
me.

First, as I said, I had no idea Theresa was sending such an
e-mail. And certainly, it was not some sort of marketing
trick. It was just her way of trying to lighten my load a
little bit.

You know, people seem to watch and read what I'm doing so
intensely and so carefully, they are always trying to figure
out my motive for doing what I do. Much of the time, they're
trying to figure out a motive which simply doesn't exist.
You ever hear the old joke about the two psychiatrists
walking towards each other down a sidewalk? As they approach
each other one of them says, "Hello" and they both
keep on walking their separate ways. But the other
psychiatrist says to himself, "Gee, I wonder what he
meant by that?"

The truth is, many times there is LESS to what people
are saying and doing (including me) than what meets the eye.
Sometimes "hello" just means "hello". Sometimes when Theresa
does something like sending a message that Gary's a little
bit down, it's just a message that Gary's a little bit down.
It wasn't Machiavellian at all. She just thought I needed a
little cheering up.