I've read too many people writing about quitting blogging lately. Quitting is the new black. I liked the old black better. (The old black was blogging vs. journalism.)
Although I can understand that it's time for Daves Winer to move on to things less stressful and enjoy his retirement years -- once he gets that extra $5K from Rogers -- the rest of you better fucking cut it out.
You're not going anywhere. You may take a break. You may go into comment-only mode. You may zap your aggregators and blogolls, even roll up your posts, but you KNOW you are not going to delete your blog, sell your domain, and disappear forever.
So just cut. it. out.
I know the sadness over what has changed; I share it. Used to be if someone disappeared for a week, the emails started flying and by week's end one of us would be on the phone or ready to fly out to east bumfuck to bring aid to our comrade in arms. Every now and then we still get together to bail someone out of trouble. But it's different.
It's not like it was when it was just us. Crap crap crap it's not like that anymore. I might not even know you're gone for a few weeks--and I might only know because your feed stays ghosted longer than usual. I'll wait patiently. I know you'll bold back up again soon. I don't call in the Mounties. I might still pick up the phone. I don't know. Depends on what's up in 23,000 other places.
And that sucks.
What has changed?
Everything.
Every little thing has changed. And yet, the familiarity, the patterns, the cadence we've created together here--I know you won't leave forever because you can't. You can't because you did it once and then again.
RageBoy gave me one bit of advice way back in 02. Never throw in the towel completely. Longevity counts. He turned out to be right. Again.
It all comes forward.
David was right too--we really have written ourselves into existence. And now what? This last week of meeting folks I've known for five years, touching shirt collars and napes of necks--we exist. I am here to tell you, we exist. We exist!!!
What we were trying to escape, it's here. You see? It's you. It's me.
It's knowing that we're stuck with ourselves.
It's not even so bad. It's not so bad. Tony is 100-percent cotton, Nancy's eyes are kinder than I knew. I still hear Doc's cough. Tish's laugh is infectious.
They can't go anywhere. You see?
Neither can you.
You can't go anywhere. Because you're already there.
Tags: blogging, winer, quitting, tech = Powered by Qumana
