[caption id=”attachment_31227” align=”aligncenter” width=”409” caption=”I believe it goes without saying, I still love this pic.”][/caption]

Everyone get your Kleenexes out

Well, Zoners, I guess this is just about it. My second to last post. I still have to post the interview with Stephen, which will happen tomorrow. And yes, you will definitely love this interview. But this post is for me to talk to all of you for a while, one last time, through the medium of this site.

This last month has been such a roller coaster for me. I don’t even know where to start. I guess I’ll start with the beginning of the end. A few weeks ago, I woke up and realized I was tired. I mean, dead, to the bones, to the soul tired. I had too much going on in my life, and I had to lighten the load. The morning I woke up and realized, “I’ve got to let go of the site” was one of the most surreal moments of my life, I think. You have to understand, blogging had become my second life. I woke up at 6a four mornings a week and blogged. At lunch I blogged. At night I blogged. When I was out with my husband, and my friends, I was checking my emails and working constantly to make sure that we were the best fan site out there. A huge part of my IRL social life was spending time with my WordPress blogger friends. Creating and maintaining this site was so much more than typing out blog posts - it was making friends, and sharing joys, and commiserating in sorrows (MANILOW!!!!!). Being a blogger had become part of my identity. So to wake up and realize, it’s time to let go, was indescribable.

So did you do the interview with Stephen yet?

Telling the Completists was hard, telling the Zoners was harder, but telling Stephen was the hardest of all. And even after I had gotten word that Stephen had read my note to him and agreed to an interview, and even after Part One of the interview was over, I was still completely at peace with the decision to shut the site down. The first conversation Stephen and I had was filled with technical difficulties - the call dropped twice, there were interruptions (“I’ve got to take this, it’s the show.”), and both of us suffering from a huge case of exhaustion. He apologized at the end, and said we’d have another conversation in a day or two to finish the interview. I thought, oh man, I have to do this again? I’m so very, very tired. I had originally intended on publishing the audio, but the technical difficulties would have made it embarrassing on both ends, so it was decided that we’d publish a transcript.

We tried a couple of different times to get together after that, but the only time that really worked for both of us was yesterday evening. I knew he hadn’t been feeling 100% during the day, and since I knew we weren’t going to be publishing the audio, I decided, I’m not going to be “DB”, I’m just going to be me, having a conversation with an old friend. I started the conversation by apologizing for taking his time, especially knowing that he was a bit under the weather and his schedule was so swamped. He said something to the effect of, “I’m a nice guy, I can’t believe it took you this long to figure that out.” And off we were.

And how’d it go?

I’ll publish the Q&A tomorrow of both Part One and Part Two, but I’ll be honest - at the end last night, I got a little choked up. His amazing kindness caught me completely off guard. While I knew that I was doing what I needed to do for my own happiness, it hit me like a ton of bricks what I was losing by retiring the site. And that’s really all I have to say about that.

What’s going to happen with you, and with the site?

It has been nice to be able to watch the ‘Colbert Report’ in my own time, without having to type for an hour while I watch it. It’s been nice to discover news about Stephen by finding it first on CNN.com or some other mainstream media. It’s been nice to go to mass every morning without feeling the weight of the responsibility of the blog. It’s been nice to come home and sit with my husband and have dinner at a normal time and watch a little TV, then read for an hour before going to bed. It was great getting to spend last Saturday morning at my new parish making friends while helping with the flowers for the May Crowning of Mary instead of fixing my template or working on a blog post.

But I will miss blogging. And I will miss you guys.

While I know that both Zoners and ‘Colbert Report’ staff will miss the work that is put into the site, I also know that the Nation will continue to organically manifest itself in unique and surprising ways. The fan base is strong, and there are many leaders who are just waiting for an opportunity to show their passion for the show and for Stephen’s creation. I can’t wait to see what you guys come up with!

I’ll still be online, and you can still email me at db@ [DELETE THIS] nofactzone.net. I’ll renew the domain and keep the archives alive for as long as the donated funds last. At this point, with our current plan, we’ve got over 8 months worth of hosting paid for, and that’s if we stay at our current hits. When our hits drop, I’ll change our plan to something that better handles the lower load, and our slush fund will last even longer. However, in a few weeks we’ll shut the comments down, so that our comments don’t become a hot mess of spam.

Any final words?

I’m kind of lousy with words, but I happen to know a Catholic saint who put into words exactly how I’m feeling right now. St. Therese of Lisieux, the Little Flower. St. Therese said this in her book, ‘Story of a Soul’ -

Our Lord has deigned to explain this mystery to me. He showed me the book of nature, and I understood that every flower created by Him is beautiful, that the brilliance of the rose and the whiteness of the lily do not lessen the perfume of the violet or the sweet simplicity of the daisy. I understood that if all the lowly flowers wished to be roses, nature would lose its springtide beauty, and the fields would no longer be enamelled with lovely hues. And so it is in the world of souls, Our Lord’s living garden. He has been pleased to create great Saints who may be compared to the lily and the rose, but He has also created lesser ones, who must be content to be daisies or simple violets flowering at His Feet, and whose mission it is to gladden His Divine Eyes when He deigns to look down on them. And the more gladly they do His Will the greater is their perfection.

I’ve struggled to be a rose for a long time, but now I am ready delight in the joy of being a simple daisy. But I also know in my heart of hearts, I will always be a Mrs. Colbert. Hence the video below.

And one final note to all of my friends at the ‘Colbert Report’ and Comedy Central, especially Stephen:

Thank you. For everything.

Original Article