JJHuddle: My Pride vs. My Comeback

From my Freshman year of high school in 2001-'02 until last football season, I was a big-time contributor on the JJHuddle web site. JJHuddle is an online sports forum where you can log in and talk about high school sports with people from all around Ohio. My handle was "thePITman." During my 6-year involvement with JJHuddle I built a reputation of a solid and knowledgeable Triway HS fan and a supporter/follower of all the area teams while accumulating well over 10,000 posts along the way. I'll put it this way: Many friends and others in our district and community address me as "Pit" instead of my name nowadays just because of my once-serious involvement in the site (look at the name of this blog, and you'll understand!).

Anyway... Because of my personal involvement with the high school scene and serving as a coach for the Triway varsity baseball team combined with a few personal frustrations I had with members of the web site, I thought it would be better for me to stop posting on the web site altogether. You know, conflict of interest and biased opinions do not get very far on a web site with such a wide variety of people and opinions, plus it was driving me nuts chatting with some of the people on there. So, I made it official and stopped posting on the site. However, as I left I got into somewhat of a wordy conflict with one of the people I met personally on the site, we'll call him "BRF." It seemed like a somewhat bitter and negative way for me to leave the site, and his last words were "I guarantee you will come back to the Huddle someday. You can't stay away, and you know it." I don't have anything personal against BRF, it's just the way things ended that makes me uneasy.

Ever since then, I have been heavily involved with the "other" online sports forum, Yappi. I have built a similar reputation on there and am not about to leave that site, but I feel there is so much local chatter on JJ that I feel I belong there and would enjoy taking part in the conversations, no matter how frustrated I get when certain schools' fans gang up and declare themselves superior. Don't get me started...

The ultimate decision I am faced with is this: Do I let my pride stand in the way and make myself refrain from re-joining JJHuddle like I have so coldly for the past year? Or do I follow my gut and what I want to do, and join the community once again? I know this sounds like such an easy proposition. It's obvious - join the site again, and don't worry about what they think! But no, it's not that easy. I just know BRF, the way he is, will be sitting there, waiting to rub it in my face, telling me he was right all along. He would never let me forget it, either. I don't know. I wish I could explain it, but it really bothered me the way I left the site the first time. But I really enjoyed JJ outside of some of those things. Give me your thoughts!

May God continue to bless you.
-Marcum