A Letter from Ethan Lee: I’m Stepping Down as Managing Editor

Hi. It’s me, Ethan Lee, the managing editor of For Whom the Cowbell Tolls.

I’m also Ethan Lee, the soon to be not managing editor of For Whom the Cowbell Tolls.

I want to thank you, the readers and community, for the past year. I’ve been managing For Whom the Cowbell Tolls since last May and it’s been a blast. I mean, it hasn’t always been fun in each and every moment. I’ve often upset certain parts of the MSU community and riled up angry accounts on twitter.

Like that time that fans were mad at Ryan Gridley’s family because Gridley was attending his sister’s wedding and I called those fans morons. But even that was kinda fun because those fans were indeed morons.

Anyways, I am indeed stepping down as managing editor of this wonderful community. I think it’s time that I move on a bit and take a different role. As I’ve mentioned, this past year has been a blast for me.

I got that tattoo, I’ve been interviewed on ESPN Radio affiliates in Utah, and the site has seen a considerable amount of growth the past few months. And that’s only part of what we’ve done here in my year as the managing editor. I’ve also had the privilege of writing asinine articles and making dumb jokes and well just having fun on the internet.

The growth of this community, the over 1,000 new twitter followers and over 5,000 new folks on facebook, is one of the coolest things to see. That and the addition of some new faces in the comment section and all of the new, wonderful contributors that write and podcast here at FWtCT are what I’m most proud of from my time here as the managing editor. I’ve loved seeing the community grow.

But, again, I do fully believe that it is time for me to step down. And that’s for a few reasons.

One, first and foremost, I graduate in December. I want to enjoy more of my final semester in Starkville having a something taken off of my plate. Only taking a handful of classes and not having to worry about every little thing here on the site will afford me a chance to enjoy more of the last few months of my college career.

Two, I need less stress in my life. Mentally, I’ve been a mess these past few months. Trying to maintain things here in addition to being a full-time student and participating in research in an ecology lab on campus is doable, but it can get difficult. There’s been a lot of long nights and I have found myself awake at 3 in the morning watching infomercials and crappy movies because I don’t know what’s going on in my life. I mean, part of that was caused by me waking up at 2 in the morning panicking because of stress, but hey, whatever. Infomercials are entertaining, sometimes.

But I need more time in my day to day life. And I need to find out what I want out of life, which is something that has caused me to wake up at 2 in the morning and leads me to watching infomercials at 3 in the morning. If I can get things somewhat sorted and figure out where it is that God wants me to take my life, then I’ll feel a bit more at ease and watch considerably fewer movies at times when I should be sleeping.

Three, I want more time to focus on the content that I produce. Yes, I’m stepping down as managing editor of the site, but I’d love to come back and help out and continue to build this community. I don’t want this to be the end of my involvement on this wonderful site and I want to explore some types of content that I’ve tried to produce before but simply didn’t have the time to fully commit to.

I mean, I’m going to take a few months off, of course. Starting at the end of this month, I’m taking a bit of a vacation, but I will be back. And I’ll have more articles to write then. And I’m sure that maybe some of y’all will read them.

Again, from the bottom of my heart, thank you.