I still read Window in the Garden Wall every day. (Well, every weekday when there’s something new up. Hasn’t been anything since January 20, at the time of this post.) But I don’t think the proprietress, Arevanye, reads my blog anymore. I’m not upset by that. Heck, outside of a few family and friends, I don’t think anyone really reads my blog, and that’s okay. This isn’t a pity-party intended to get people to leave comments telling me to hang in there and that they read my blog but don’t comment often. If I really cared about how many people read my blog, then I would use a stat tracker to keep track of visitors. (I used to, but it was too much of a hassle and didn’t give me information I thought was accurate so I dumped it.)
Anyway, I’m more bemused than anything, really. It’s been a slow process, but while I’ve been getting the hint that she didn’t really want anything more to do with me, I don’t really know why. I used to do a little guest blogging at the aforementioned CS Lewis blog. I really enjoyed that. Then, one day, I found that I had been removed as a member of that blog. No big deal; it’s her blog she can do as she pleases. But she didn’t e-mail and say why. (Of course, it is possible that she did and my spam filter caught it, but I’m usually pretty good about scanning it for real e-mails caught inadvertently.) Then the comments stopped coming on my blog. Then she stopped (almost entirely) replying to any comments I made on her personal blog (at Live Journal). And most recently she took me off her “Friends List” for her LJ, and since her LJ is entirely “Friends Locked”, I can’t read it anymore at all. I’m betting the next step will be to delink my blog from her WGW blog. And, really, that’s okay. I’m not bitter or upset or anything. (At least as far as I can tell through self-analyzation; though perhaps talking about it on my own blog belies this *shrug*. But then what are personal blogs for if not navel-gazing?) But I do wish I knew what it was that set this whole process in motion.
Addendum: After I finished writing this, but before I posted it, it occurred to me that this is related to a long post I wrote a while back about the nebulous nature of relationships formed on the internet (and the role of blogs particularly) and wondering if the inclination towards smaller, more organic groupings around shared interests would have a detrimental effect on society. Which you can read here, if you’re interested.
Neh 