Sometimes the only defense against warmongers and the slow braking ‘pragmatism’ of the political opposition is just to go forth and love.

He's got it in one.

In related news: Michael Bérubé's final post.

And where have Fafnir, Giblets and the Medium Lobster gone?

Long time passing.

The Wikipedia article on Fafblog seems to have been deleted. The Wikipedia article on Slate's "the Fray" has an unsourced assertion that the Fray "may have served as a halfway house for the authors of Fafblog".

Oh, I know. I peek at some of my old favorites, in vain hope. Billmon really seems to have checked out for good, and Heidi Bond hasn't posted at Letters of Marque since she got her clerkship; but every now and then a blog comes back to life, like Daniel Davies's D-squared Digest, so I keep checking.

As long as we're on the subject, what's with Body and Soul requiring a password?

Well, speaking as someone whose blog went pretty silent for several months last year due to various real-life concerns, I sympathize. The oddity in Billmon's exit, though, was his apparent feeling that the progressive blogsphere wasn't making much of a difference. Counterpoint to that (as I blogged last weekend) --- a framed printout of Get Your War On in the Harvard Art Museum's show of political art, along with work by Daumier, Manet and Picasso.

Anyone for an "old blogger's retirement home" group blog, for people who still have something to say, every once in a while, but not quite as often?

And today Busy, Busy, Busy is back; the previous post was October 12.

I'm the farthest thing possible from the deservedly well-known and well-trafficked bloggers who are quitting. But I quit my personal blogging at LJ last year because I felt that publicizing and performing my thoughts for an audience, and interacting with so many online conversations every day, was putting me in a bad headspace. Like Bilbo Baggins, I felt like butter scraped over too much bread.

There are many days I'd like to quit even reading all blogs except this one, because this is the one where I learn worthwhile things and feel like the conversation is fulfilling all the time. (Seriously -- I'm not trying to flatter.) Others induce rage exhaustion even though they're well-written, or just take more energy than they give back, even if they're interesting. (I keep reading lots of blogs, mostly because it's the most convenient brain break from really tough engineering problems.)

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I completely sympathize and understand those who don't want to keep it up anymore. Best wishes to Kevin Hayden. And everyone else.

Speaking as a lifelong veteran of fanzines, APAs, small press publishing, online forums, and blogs: Nobody can do anything forever. Everybody's got to stop and recharge sometime.

It isn't necessarily a tragedy. Hey, we got two or three years of free Michael Bérubé ice cream. Maybe one of these days we'll get more.

On a related note, the Wikipedia article on gafiation is only a stub, and could use expansion.

Well I don't do a blog per se, but I can tell you that publishing something on the web regularly, even if it is about a billion and a half times easier than publishing it via the standard dead tree route, can really wear you down even when you think it's going well. It can feel far more intrusive than it really is and you can feel a lot more isolated than you really are. Sometimes you can feel like you are being assaulted at every turn even if only 100 people are reading what you do, and you can feel like you are wasting your time shouting into an empty well, even if 10,000 are. It's weird. Oh, and you really don't make any money off it, unless you're very lucky and/or a marketing genius, so it's your "hobby" that you do for "fun." I've been doing it for ten years and I'm not entirely sure why I'm still sane.

The voices tell me its because I'm better than everyone else. That's why they chose me, after all.