a little at a time, then all at once

I have decided to put this blog on hiatus, at least for awhile. When I started it, I didn't really intend it to be anything more than a goofy outlet for whatever cognitive runoff came to mind while I was working--a natural extension of e-mails I would send out to groups of friends. I didn't think that anyone who wasn't already a friend of mine would read it, and, for that matter, I didn't actually think I would stick with it for more than a week or two.

I certainly did not imagine that having a blog would be a way for me to make many new friends--you know who you are--which has been the single best thing about it.

But then, sometime over the past year or so the audience problem caused by all the different relationships I had with people who were sometimes reading--family, friends, students, colleagues, prospective employers--made it harder for me to write with the same spirit with which I started. I've also sometimes felt like I was morphing into some kind of peculiar jester-statesman for my discipline, which I'll profess to some ambivalence about.

Dealing with troll-commenters has also sapped some of my enthusiasm for blogging, especially as having to turn off anonymous comments has reduced comments from non-trolls as well. (It's strange: I blogged along for quite awhile without comments and not missing them, but once you have them, it's hard to feel the same energy from blogging when their number is sharply reduced.)

In any case, I don't want to be melodramatic about this, especially since given my tendencies toward distracted logorrhea I'll probably be back sooner or later, here or somewhere else. (And especially since last time I proclaimed a hiatus it ended up not being for long.) Even so, it seems opportune to repeat how grateful I am to everyone who has been a supportive reader over the years.