There was a time when I couldn’t even imagine not being a blogger. My identity as such has been both something that distinguishes me in the eyes of real world friends and family and also something that has given me friends and family whom I’ve never met in person.
But all things have life cycles, and it’s possible that this blog is nearing its own end.
Life goes on for billions of people who have never bothered with a blog.
A blog should end when you have nothing more to say.
The essentials of life continue here on the mountain, blog or no blog. Everything changes. Nothing changes.
Maybe I just need a vacation. From blogging. From the essentials.
Or maybe I need to remember how to be a poet in the real world.
rest up a few days, a week or two. i bet you’ll feel the itch sooner or later. i’ve “quit” blogging more times than i ever quit smoking, and that was a large number…
Please don’t stop! I understand you are going through an extremely rough time, but you will be sorely missed if we can no longer read about your thoughts, your joys, and yes, your pain. I have discovered a lot of bloggers who seem phony, I have never for a minute thought that you were and it is just one of the reasons I find your blog important.
Elaine,
I go in and out of these ways of thinking about blogging. But self-expression is self-expression and if it is not through blogging, it will come out in other ways. I hold you in my thoughts.
Thanks, all for the encouraging words. Yes, I guess there’s an ebb and flow to blogging as in all things. It has to be one-day-at-a-time for me in all things these day, it seems.
Elaine, I can sure relate to this, having struggled myself for a couple of years with trying to quit, then trying to come back, then repeating the cycle. Well, most things in life being cyclical, I guess blogging’s no exception.
It will be a great loss if you quit, and I will be among those saddened. I will also be among those having a personal understanding of the need to do it.
I wish you well.
There is no blogging, only writing. Too many of us attenpt to straighten this form into a single genre and then feel low when we grow stale. There’s more here than the asynchronous rhythm of post and comment, comment and post. And you, a poet in the real world, know that. So I hope you’ll continue to share your writing here where it is accessible, but I wouldn’t worry about conforming to some bloggy standard if I were you. Which I’m not. You, that is. Whether you’re journalizing your daily trials, watching the turtles crawl by, or waxing weird but eloquent around some shamanistic practice, the body of your work is being collected here and there is an audience for it.
Thanks for writing.
I have been at this blogging stuff a far shorter time than you, Elaine, and there are days – even weeks – when I can’t figure out why I keep doing it. When there is nothing much in my head I want to say. When I want to break out of the routine it has become over nearly four years.
But I’m with Frank about “no blogging, only writing,” and beyond that there is the community of people I have come to depend on as friends and acquaintances who enlighten, entertain and are now an important part of my life.
You’re an institution, Elaine, having been here a lot longer than most, and it would be a very good thing if you would stick around.