The Dark Days of Blogging.

Who in the hell gave the directive to execute Order 66?

A lot of great people have recently given up their niche in the blogger universe, all for valid reasons, but it's still unsettling to me.

When I first started this blog, I wondered if I'd have enough material to make it a worthwhile adventure. It turns out I may not have, as I've been in a creative slump lately. As late as last week I had considered canning my own blog and becoming strictly a commenter. For the last couple of months I've gotten more enjoyment leaving comments about the creative efforts of others than I have from constructing my own work. One reason (maybe the main reason) I decided to stick it out, is because others were also deleting their blogs, and I don't like being part of the crowd.

Just to be clear, I don't think other people were deleting blogs because it was fashionable, they all have good, personal reasons for discontinuing, and some just needed a couple of days off and are now back at it. But I wonder what people's expectations of blog authors are? I'm 27 years old, and single. My life affords me the time to blog if I chose to. Some day things in my life could change. Does anyone expect me to blog until the day that I die? Should blogs run a couple of months? Years? Decades? I would think that at some point we will all run out of meaningful things to say, at least at the quality that we want to say them.

At what point do we have an obligation to our readers? Maybe we don't have any obligation but force ourselves to think that we do? I think I've seen every possible emotion from various readers out there when blogs are shut down. Some are sad for selfish reasons, some are sad for the author, some are concerned, some make jokes, some even get pissed. I think to a degree those are all perfectly appropriate feelings to have, but it also shows why authors get burned out. Even if you create a blog with no intent to serve a viewing audience, at some point you almost feel compelled because of the comments you receive, the sheer number of people that find you. All of that creates pressure. Maybe we, as readers, put too much pressure on our favorite authors to keep up the good work?

It seems like a lot of good blogs are disappearing lately. Hopefully they come back, and hopefully us as readers will be more understanding if our favorite author calls a time out, requesting a break from the action.