Ta-ta for now

I always knew this day would come (although considering my commitment towards the whole concept of commitment, I may end up reneging on the following), but I never looked forward to it:

People, I’m folding BumfOnline.

Of course, this should come as no surprise to almost anyone who reads this on a regular basis. My blogging has been sporadic for some time. Posts which used to come several times a day are now spaced out by a week or more. In fact, as of late I’ve started far more posts than I’ve actually gotten around to publish, and that annoys the hell out of me.

It’s not that I’ve stopped writing, or that I have no more interest in the outside world; to the contrary, I still am a voracious reader of blogs, newspapers and, most especially, books. To be sure, I’ve read more books in the past few months than I had in the previous few years.

Part of it is because I haven’t been working. Not full-time, anyways. I’ve had an opportunity during the last 6 months or so to take a deep look in side myself in order to discover what I truly want and need. However, when I began blogging, it seemed to be a stop-gap measure which allowed some creativity and interest while I slogged along in a job I neither loved nor appreciated. Now that I’ve moved on, I no longer crave the outlet I once cherished.

Another part of it is the echo-chamber mentality of the blogosphere, a phenomenon much-documented elsewhere. It’s not that I believe that blogs have no value much less that I recognize it as an accumulation of communities coming together to consensus on ideas. (That’s human nature, and blogging is simply a extension of that behavior, and thus this is nothing to be lamented.) My problem is that I don’t believe I’m adding anything productive to the conversation, at least since I’ve scaled back my blogging duties during the past year. I respect originality and I’m having trouble staying original, much less relevant.

Which leads me to the final reason: I have difficulty fitting in any certain category. This has been an issue for me all of my life, a person with many good friends but no real close ones, someone with a broad range of interests but no real passions for any one thing. Instead, my passion is for ideas of all kinds, my love for many people. It is because of this that my blog ranged from hockey to politics to philosophy to family to pop culture to religion to social issues to the frivolous activities of mankind. I could never settle on a theme, which was unfair to my audience, all of whom seemed to stop by for their own reasons. I couldn’t keep up, and it finally got to be too much.

As for now, I am not against helping out on group blogs if anyone asks (hint, hint Darcey), but I just don’t want to run my own blog for a while. It’s not going to get completely abandoned but I’ll just keep it going as a life-update for my friends and family.

I’m going to continue writing, just for myself. I’ve been sketching ideas for short stories and the like, and I now also keep a private journal which has absolutely no expectations whatsoever (Bumf recommends). I’m also expecting to start a new job in the near future, one which might just keep me interested and challenged enough so that I don’t have to fall back on blogging as a means to express myself. That’s the hope, anyway.

In summation, I just want to thank everyone who stopped by over the years. I believe that I did the best I could to entertain, to inform and to question, and I like to think that you knew that too. It meant a lot to me that you were there, even if you never revealed yourself.

Sometimes, all a person needs is a voice and the prospect that someone else is listening. All else is an extravagance.

Take care, dear reader, until we meet again.