Sunday, November 24, 2013
The last post
In a few days, I will have been doing this blog for ten (10) round years. It has been a lot of fun. When I started, blogs were a bigger thing than they are now. So I jumped into the pool. Once I got started, I found that I liked it both as a way to stay in touch with friends and family but also as a kind of journal for myself. I had a fairly large readership at that time and put the blog address on all my emails so I picked up a lot of readers that way. I also found that a lot of people were reading the posts who had googled themselves there or when the blog had showed up on their radars somehow.
Over time, as it turns out, blogs in general have given way to other media. The dread FaceBook that I will not join, Tweets which sort of interest me but not enough to stay in touch with them and whatever else comes down the pike that include photos, video and so on. Technology has passed the blogger on the road to communication and we are eating the dust.
Hardly anyone reads the blog today. Most, not all, family and just a few friends. I find that I have to write the current events of my life in emails and phone calls which are aimed to the specific people who I stay in touch with and they with me. Outside the blog. Better in a way because these are tailored and, while not as frequent, more meaningful connections than the blog has been. Although I have felt the connection with an audience as I have written, pictured some people reading.
This has never been a comment laden blog. But it has been months since there was even one of any kind. Even a return rant. The guy who kept answering the same post I wrote over five years ago about the con-letters from Africa hasn't been irate now for over a year.
Recently I reduced the size and scope in an experimental way. Not satisfying. One says he misses the blog. Others say no comment. Me? It is not the same.
I note that in the last month or so, we rounded a corner of another kind. Not just the tenth (10th) year of the blog but also the 10,000th post. That is a lot of writing. I get tired just looking at the number but also a little proud I kept with it so long.
There are still the archives. I will not be dumping those although I suspect that Blogger will catch up somehow and one day tell me that a new layout or agreement means the end of those. But in the meantime, it is all still in the cloud or wherever they keep this stuff. I, personally, don't plan to dig in and look at them but you never know.
If you have hung in this long, thanks. It has been fun. I already miss you. The "you" I visualized while writing. A bit. But not too much. Send me an email. I will write back. To you, not to the masses. That is it. I am out of here.
Cheers!
