  Is it just me... or is there a major blogger turnover taking place? Over the past few months, I've had a few conversations with some of the better known bloggers on the list to my right... and I've heard something similar from several of them: the weblog thing has been fun and they might keep going for a while longer but the time might soon be drawing to a close. I didn't think much about those various conversations at the time... particularly because the writers of the weblogs I read most frequently might have made statements like that, but they've continued to write. It's only in the past few weeks, that I've started to pay attention to the numbers of individuals on my list and elsewhere in blog world-- some of them quite prominent-- who have closed their weblogs, or have gone on some kind of extended hiatus with little or no indication of when they might return. I've been holding on to a number of quiet or plainly defunct weblogs in my own linklist. But I've found myself dropping names off the new list. And frankly, it's kind of sad to say goodbye, if only virtually, to these people who decided to share their lives and their interests with us.
I'm not going to try to wax eloquent about it, but its funny how-- after you've been given access to someone's life for awhile-- that you feel like your life has somehow been entwined with theirs. And after a few weeks go by, when it becomes apparent that your favorite weblogger is on more than a short vacation, there's this strange sense of loss that you feel about this person whom you've likely never met in person and probably never will meet. You don't know what they're doing anymore; what's happened to them. This internet is an odd thing.
I've been online for 10 years as of next month and some of you have been on for much longer. For a long time, people found various reasons to hate or fear the Internet. In that way, they treated it like any other invention that has had a profound impact on people's lives. The automobile was going to be the downfall of civilization; then the radio; then TV. The list is long.
It never turns out to be true. And one of the charges about how impersonal and superficial the Internet is... has turned out to be a much more complicated picture than people once thought. If any of you former writers are still reading, and I know some of you are, thanks for sharing and don't be a stranger! 
