Don't Blog

A forlorn Frank Paynter put out a missing persons report for George Partington. If you see this man... (foto) ... tell him his blog misses him. And I already miss him too. George Partington, Highwater." Blogging for less than three months, Partington takes the time to explain his autoblogicide in a departing post:

I haven't been very funny lately. Have I ever? Seems like I started out this blogging thing laughing at myself and my willingness to let a buncha stuff out online. I tried to be creative and it was fun. For a while there, it was like a great party where more and more people kept dropping in, drawn by some inexplicable energy. Not referring to my site specifically, just the whole blog ecosystem I found myself in. That would be the progressive one. The intelligent one, the humorous one, and most definitely the concerned one. I guess it was serious then too; it's just the laughter that's changed. The lack of it.

But I didn't know how else to be, or what else to be, or why I would be something else. Now, it's time to be something else. It's time to separate the blogging and the life. Yep, it's time to unplug a bit. It's time to welcome myself into the desert of the real, and see if I can coax forth some tender shoots. I've got two named Eleanor and Audrey. And blogging has given me some clues to some others.

I've about worn myself out reading blogs and other online content. I feel like snapping at every conservative I run across. I'm feeling stretched thin. Things are not funny anymore. Call it the post-democratic blues.

We live too much in our minds, and it's time for me to find some balance. Neither mind, body nor spirit have it, and consequently, none of them are terribly healthy. And blogging has brought on a vicious case of ADD. I'm so scattered, I don't even have time to read the stuff I've linked to. ...

It's time to work when I should work, and play when I should play. It's time to figure out what that means. I need to find the lightness in either activity, and in myself.

...

Time to take stock of my own personal wilderness, offline. So no blogging and much less reading blogs. That's gonna be hard, but I think it's something I need to do right now.

And if and when I come back to blogging, it will be a new site. So (sniff) say goodbye to High Water.

Might blogging cause clinical depression? Attention deficit? Political intolerance?