Blog burnout

Recently I noticed that a blog I read regularly, intint, seemed to no longer exist. The feed in my bloglines susbcriptions seemed to have a permanent [!] error next to it, and when I clicked on the URL to go directly to the blog, got the dreaded 404 Not Found message.

The first thing I thought was that something bad had happened – the blogger was ill, or had been involved in an accident, or something like that. Then I thought the blog had been maliciously damaged by Evil Forces, or hacked.

I emailed the blogger herself, intint, and asked if all was well in her part of the world, given that her blog seemed to have disappeared.

I was not expecting her answer, that all was well – except for her blog, because:

I killed it.

Strangely, it never occured to me that the blogger herself could choose to quit, seemingly out of the blue and without any sort of announcement or warning. And yet, when I think about it, I’m not sure why I was so taken aback by intint’s action. I had no idea she’d been contemplating quitting. I guess I’d gotten used to the small glimpse into her life and her partner’s life, and how much I’d learnt about these relative strangers (who I’ve never met, after all!), that I’d forgotten how little I can actually know about what goes on in people’s lives just by reading their blogs. Thinking about it, people do reveal a lot about themselves in their blogs, but of course they also choose not to reveal a lot more.

Even if intint had chosen to announce that she was quitting I think I would still have been shocked. I think I develop these relationships with all these blogs (and by extension, their bloggers) as I read them. Reading them becomes part of my daily routine, and I gradually feel like I am getting to know the bloggers themselves – even if they only ever write about particular topics and don’t do personal stuff as a rule. (And of course it is easier to get to know bloggers who do write about their lives.)

I hadn’t realised that intint had been blogging in one form or another for a while:

I feel kind of liberated now. I guess, I’d been writing an online journal type thing for over six years, so I guess I’m well and truly over it. And I guess it means I have more time to just read other blogs.

I’ll miss intint’s blog! I guess we will see blogs come and go over time.

Being a relative newbie in the blogosphere, I have yet to experience blog burnout…

Categories: blogging