Ghost of a flea

Strain

Eric writes on blogging.

It concerns the subject of abandoned blogs. I am a little sensitive about losing friends, doubtless because I lost so many of them to AIDS. But here in the blogosphere, I have to say that despite my kvetching about ill will, incivility, and yes, even outright bigotry, the worst thing I have had to witness is the death of blogs I have enjoyed.

Sketches of Strain is one example of a blog which touched my life, then died. I got that awful, sinking feeling I know so well, and....

Quite right. I had not thought about that sinking feeling in connection to losing friends to AIDS. I know that feeling well. In some ways it is not the close friends but the acquaintances I miss the most. To everything there is a season and this includes the loss of family and friends. Grieving is something we all have to learn how to do but somehow those friendships that were cut short are the worse loss. Only yesterday I was thinking of a friend who died twelve years ago and I still cannot quite understand how it is that I am alive and he is not.

There are acquaintances we only see at parties or only in the context of work or the local watering-hole. The challenges of distance and the limitations of the medium may mean friendship in the blogosphere is something similar. Or perhaps none of us have been at this long enough to find out how this conversation works (or it could be just the Flea, of course). I know I would choose to never look at CNN or another New York Times article if the choice was that or losing InstaPundit or Electric Venom. My daily stroll down the blogroll is as much about checking in on people's lives as it is on the news and therein lies the difference between blogging and the rest of the media.

If you are reading this David, I want to say I respect and support your decision to move on from Sketches of Strain but you should know your blog is already missed.

Posted by Ghost of a flea at November 24, 2003 09:17 AM