I never meant this to happen. This writing thing. I was just, shall we say, verbose as a child and adult, and I wrote with some flow and well, I got praised a bit here and there, mostly for essays and very long boring tracts on the death penalty and Rachel’s fathers household gods, and stuff like that doesn’t play at all well with the public but thrills the bejesus out of professor or six who spend their professional lives hoping to ignite the same passion they suffer in their students.
When blogging came along, I gotta say, it was a perfect storm.
My favorite writing is just off the cuff sorta rambling and blogging seemed to meet that style and give it a big old kiss of acceptance. No longer editing but gettin’ on with it.
I’ve been through a lot of transitions and polishing since the beginning back in whatever it was, 2006 or something. I changed the name a few times, changed the pretty covering it comes it, changed the focus, changed the writing. Guess it changed me too. Made me a bit more fearless, a bit more in your face, a bit more eccentric too no doubt.
Yeah, you know what’s comin’.
I’m taking a break. Maybe a break forever, maybe for a while. Maybe I’m moving to different pastures or just being bored. Some combination is about.
This, (these) blogs have never been what I envisioned. I envisioned a wildly controversial give and take with a bunch of people arguing over points and theories. That never happened. I got plenty of feedback, but it never developed into the conversation I had expected. The numbers went up and they plateaued and they rose, and they fell, but the comments never took over.
I always sought to be the spark that ignited the chat. Instead I remained the focal point.
I’ve had amazingly faithful readers, some for years.
My haters are numerous but cowardly for the most part. They tend to “cut me” in some juvenile high schoolish drama instead of having the courage to actually try to drum up a defense to their silly notions. So my response has been to poke at them incessantly as one does a bear in a cage, provoking its rage. That doesn’t speak so well of me, but I never tried to claim I was a good person after all.
So ceasing my efforts comes with some regret that I can’t dangle the truth before them daily, though lord knows they surely don’t read it anyway.
This does not mean I’m going off to some mountain to meditate.
I just seem to have an increasingly busy life right now, and I’m enjoying it too much to worry about getting out a daily missal of angst written in my indomitable snarky style. Worse, I find myself repeating myself, too many times.
Since much of my activity is on Facebook, I’ll still be making my points, and offering up good reading material when I find it. Just not formalizing it with an essay.
Perhaps the time of the blog has past. They say it has. Who am I to disagree? All I know is that I made no “smashing success” and never became the “talk of the town”, though I’m not sure I wanted that. Undoubtedly I wanted the praise, but not the responsibility that comes with it.
Perhaps the ensuing presidential campaign will ignite me again, but I fear that I will repeat again and again the same arguments, pointing out the same stupidities. I’m boring myself at this point.
Anyway, I’ll be around to those of you who are Facebookers. I may start a page there just to focus the political and stupid off my wall and into it’s nice little cubby hole. Who knows. I don’t.
All I know is that I have a lot of living type things to do, and I want to do them more than I want to repeat myself daily. Frankly I’m tired of writing something I think is juicy and certain to piss off a few, and having it land like a dud. Read by many, commented upon by nobody. The echo hurts my ears.
Perhaps I don’t write at all well after all.
Perhaps I do.
Perhaps, and perhaps.
I’ll send out notices if I start a Facebook page, but a title eludes me so far. Somethin’ catchy?
Anyway, I’m copying this to the other blog too, so you all will know.
So adios for now friends, and thank you all, especially those of you who have been faithful supporters.
I’m off to shopping, and cooking, and beading and reading, and rubbing my dogs’ bellies. And scratching the old man’s libido when he smiles that smile, and my heart melts.
