There comes a moment in every narrative where the main character not only questions primary motivations but also decides to make major changes in plot directions.

Today is such a day.

The Reluctant Leader, who has listened, advised, observed, reported and acted, is passing the baton to the next person on the Committee.

It is time to say goodbye to the leadership role, leave the Committee and retire to the cabin in the woods.

Every Committee member faces this day, some with sadness, some with gladness, and all with a sense that one’s duty has been completed and curiosity sated.

Our species is well on its way toward recontinuing its reconfiguration of the environment in which it initially adapts and later transforms.

The majority will follow along, bleating like happy sheep, adopting the latest technology, as it always has.

A few stalwarts will maintain a lifestyle away from the state-of-the-art for various reasons — affordability, learnability, stubbornness and lack of need for more efficient, interconnected whizzbang gadgetry to increase social cohesiveness.

We’ll create new labels, imagine new futures and pine for golden days of yore.

We’ll repeat ourselves, repeat ourselves, repeat ourselves.

I, the narrator, whose personality is intimately tied to the main character in this narrative, have lost the incentive to be here, no longer needing to seek my father’s approval or prove my worth to my wife’s parents by writing a blog that substitutes for the child I never sired with my wife for them (even for reasons outside my control).

I am free.

And that is as it should be for someone like me.

Goodbye, so long, and thanks for all the Phish posters on walls of paintslingers extraordinaire!