Lose the Label
A Student Activist Community

posted by jakethorn on February 25, 2008 - 6:22pm

Tags:

• meta
• personal

Just kidding. But I do want to step down as Facilitator and just write for awhile. In case you didn’t notice, I haven’t been around the last few weeks. There’s been so little activity I figured nobody would mind. In the meantime, I’ve been watching the election, writing, recording some music and taking better care of myself. It’s been good for me, and I’ve decided this is a path I need to follow.

I could just say I’m stepping down for “health reasons” and leave it at that, but I feel I owe you a little more explanation. As some of you know, I’ve had a rare intestinal disease called ulcerative colitis for about 4 years now. I made it through school by relying on a dangerous prescription drug called Prednisone and trying to tune out the symptoms, but I'm tired of living like that. I have a severe case of the disease and need to take it more seriously. There are a lot of things that affect the day-to-day symptoms, but the biggest one I have control over is stress. I've always been a juggler, and LtL was always my favorite ball up in the air, but I need to stop. At least for awhile. I still want to contribute, but I'd feel better if someone else took over here.

That being said, I still believe in the concepts and ideas that led us to launch Lose the Label in the first place. Since we started, I notice some copycats have sprung up. The difference between them and us is that we’re a ragtag bunch of volunteers with nothing but our hearts in it, and they’re private enterprises that smell a profit. Their presence convinces me that we had/have the right idea, but we're just getting stuck.

So if anybody wants the job, please speak up. If nobody does, I'll keep going because first, I owe it to Grant, and second because I still have a good feeling about this place. It'll be at a slower pace, though, because I really need to kick this stupid disease.