So one of my favorite authors, Neil Gaiman, has started a contest to win a role in the upcoming 10th anniversary edition of the audio book for his bestseller "American Gods." I want to win this like you would not believe. I'm currently in school for broadcasting and radio, but would honestly love to get into voiceover work, and winning this would be a great jumpstart to a career.

All you gotta do is go the website a vote for me, you're able to vote once per day, but I'd be happy with you just voting once! The winner will be chosen from the top 20 submissions with the most votes by May 2nd.

So help me out and vote by clicking the link below! (Yes, that's me, my username for the submission is Lightwell)

http://tinyurl.com/vote-for-fitz

Ok, so apparently people still have the wrong idea, and I'll admit, it does make it seem a little strange for me to post cryptic journals and then wipe my FA page, but hear me out on this one; I'm not having an emo fit or anything, I just realized a few things.

I don't really feel like I belong here on this website right now.

FA, as entertaining as this site can be, seems to take over people's lives. People get so involved in what's going on here, they seem to forget who they are and spend more time worrying about their watches or about some ambiguous comment somebody made that they've got their panties in a bunch over. This place turns mature people into 1st graders, with their fights and he-said-she-said and their little mud slinging matches. Get off your computers every once and a while people and realize that there is a life outside the internet. Yes, I have many, many good friends that I can really only keep contact with online. But I don't need this site to do that. I have their emails, their instant messengers, their phone numbers, and hell, I even visit sometimes. FA seems to put a very limited spotlight on anyone who posts here. Or rather, it's not the website's fault, it's the people who roam the pages and submissions, trolling or just simply typing before their few struggling brain cells catch up with their fingers and prevent them from making an ass of themselves.

I don't have a problem with this site because it's furry. I have problems with people who seem to think that this website IS furry. That in order to be furry, you have to be on this site, and heaven forbid you do or say something non-furry while you're here. I have seen more "Mac v.s. PC" or "Bush v.s. Sanity" or "opinion A v.s. opinion B" fights on this site, than I have on just about any other forum ever. And that's not me. People are entitled to their opinion, just like furries are entitled to be here for the porn, or for the art. And nobody has the right to tell them what they can or can't do (within legal limits, mind you).

I've never seen a website that has the power to cause so much drama in people's real, flesh-and-blood lives than this site does. Not even news websites that contain life or death stories, or information that may affect millions of people, or political sites that influence the direction of nations can cause as much trouble in the lives of the people who use them. Actually, that's a very unfair statement for me to make. It's not the website's fault, and let me just say now that I don't hold Dragoneer or any of the admins here responsible for anything that happens on these pages. I hold the people who use this website responsible. Those who hit the refresh button obsessively every day, because they can't go a day without counting watches; those who needlessly troll the journals of the people they don't like for any tidbit of information they can turn into a fight in the comments; those who feel the need to conduct relationships here because they're too socially inept to interact with the people outside the door of their bedroom.

I don't need that right now. I want to get my life back together. I want to get out of Michigan and get myself established. I want to experience life away from the confines of internet etiquette and drama and figure out what's really going on in the world. This does not, by any means, mean that I'm going entirely offline. Rather, I'll be around on my instant messengers, just the same as always, talking with the people who bother to message me, and when I remember to, messaging those I don't talk to nearly often enough. I have a lot in the works right now. I'm trying to get myself a job in Chicago so I can move there, I'm trying to find my muse again so I can get back to writing, I'm trying to figure out what my calling in life is, I'm trying out a new relationship, and I'm trying to be there for a few friends who are going through rough times themselves.

I have a lot going on right now. I'll be back, I'm sure, to this place. Who knows, maybe I'll start over somewhere else on a non-furry site, or go back to DA, but I'll be around here again eventually. I just don't need this place defining me right now. I don't want to be defined as a furry. I don't want to be defined as a fag. I don't want to be defined as an internet junkie. Sure, all those things are a part of my life, they've made me who I am today, and they'll always be a part of me. But I have no desire to make any of those facets ME. I am all of those things and more, yet I find that on this site, all I am is a furfag.

Do something with your lives, people. Furry is not "a way of life," LIVING is a "way of life." Get outside every once and a while and realize you're allowed to have more than one hobby. If you want to be a furry, be a furry. But don't let Furry define you any more than you let race, or religion, or financial status, or sexuality define you.

It's been an interesting run here. See ya on the flip side.

-Fitz