That’s always been my read of this.
Perhaps I missed it, but I haven’t seen an effort at redemption.
Everyone makes mistakes. Most people don’t steal money intended for cancer research, and then lie about it compulsively and continuously, and then only come clean when they’ve been publicly found out (after a lot of time and effort is put into investigating) and are being threatened with legal action and felony mail fraud charges. There is no indication that Heath ever would have come clean about all of this. And even when he was cornered and facing legal action, Heath continued to lie and deceive in his admission posts. It was unreal. Just unreal. And then Heath disappeared from the community, for understandable reasons. He was pretty universally despised after it all. But his exit also meant that he wasn’t working to make amends.
Heath donated the money he had promised to charity after he was cornered into doing so. When faced with the threat of legal action, after 2 years of stringing people along and telling us that he had already made the donation, he was all the sudden able to get the money together. That’s not atonement and that’s not redemption. Frankly, I’m not 100% certain what redemption looks like in this situation. Perhaps making an effort to be useful to and supportive of the community? Perhaps facing the music for a while and doing whatever is necessary to, as much as possible, make up for the wrongdoing? The debts incurred weren’t just financial. In any event, it seems to me that redemption doesn’t look like leaving for 6+ years and then showing up again because you’re upset that someone might be stealing your yoyo design, and then immediately talking about rebooting your company.
You all are moving forward with this project, and I’m not trying to derail that. I wish you all the best and hope it’s wildly successful. It’s especially cool that this might raise some funds for charity. None of you owe me a response, or anything, and frankly my life is way too dope for any of this to break my stride. But I think it is worth being clear on why some of us might be less than giddy with the form of Heath’s reappearance. Peace out.