A thank you to everyone

To start simply, thank you.

As most of you probably already know, I broke my arm last month, and because of that I incurred a certain amount of medical debt. Certain members of this community (namely pdb, primarily) took it upon themselves to try to raise some money to help me cover the bills, and holy hell you guys raised $5,000 – the full amount – meaning that I'm only in my originally poor financial situation, rather than a fresh new hell of debt.

Past my parents, I'm not sure anyone's ever done anything so nice for me. A couple of people have tried to tell me that reflects on me but I think that's frankly bullshit. It reflects on you all, people who gave more than you probably should have to a person you barely know just because I needed help. It seriously means a lot to me, whether you donated $5 or $250 or just gave me words of encouragement. Whatever it was, it was exactly what I needed and I thank you deeply and sincerely for it.

I have a few special thanks to give too.

To pdb

I told the rest of the TSF about my financial situation mostly because I needed people to commiserate with, and I figured our writers' chat was a great place to do that. Paul took it upon himself not only to start this fundraiser, but to work actively for over a week to make it a success. Honestly it would not have happened if he hadn't pushed me to let him do it, and if he hadn't worked so hard on it start to finish. I owe this man a nice dinner.

To Dustin, and Cartilage Free Captain

Because rivalry should never preclude one from befriending cool people, I'm pretty good friends with a lot of the masthead at CFC, particularly their fearless leader. Because of that, I owe more to them than to any group other than you, the Short Fuse readership. Dustin and Paul conceived of a contest that ended up raising the necessary funds, and because of that they get to run the blog for a day next month. It should be fun for everyone, and beyond that it means a lot to me that a group of people who had no good reason to help me out (that is, Tottenham fans) did so enthusiastically. To dare is to do, I guess. Thanks, guys.

To the rest of SB Nation Soccer

I know 7500 to Holte and Bavarian Football Works also did a lot to help, and that's honestly really cool to me too. I'm friends with the managers of both blogs, but their members also rose up and donated. Not only does it feel like sports and soccer breeds family, but it feels like people on the SB Nation network are kind of part of a clan of some kind together. Even so, without anything more than knowing the cause and a little prompting, people gave. Again, that means a lot to me. To Robert and Phil in particular, thank you. To any other blogs who helped and I missed, thank you as well.

The past month and a half hasn't been the easiest for me. All of you have helped a ton, whether I named you explicitly or not. I owe you. Whenever any of y'all come through Indianapolis, a beer's on me.