Conservative blogger Andrew Sullivan is saying goodbye to blogging. He says it’ll happen “in the near future” but he wanted to to let readers know before those auto-renewals come about.
His explanation was rather straightforward while still maintaining a flare for drama. It involves avoiding burnout and moving on to new pastures before your world falls to pieces.
“Why? Two reasons,” Sullivan explained in a post on his site Wednesday afternoon. “The first is one I hope anyone can understand: although it has been the most rewarding experience in my writing career, I’ve now been blogging daily for fifteen years straight (well kinda straight). That’s long enough to do any single job. In some ways, it’s as simple as that. There comes a time when you have to move on to new things, shake your world up, or recognize before you crash that burn-out does happen.”
What’s more, he wants to return to the “actual world.” He wants to think. Hey book agents — he wants to write a book.
“I’m a human being before I am a writer; and a writer before I am a blogger, and although it’s been a joy and a privilege to have helped pioneer a genuinely new form of writing, I yearn for other, older forms. I want to read again, slowly, carefully. I want to absorb a difficult book and walk around in my own thoughts with it for a while. I want to have an idea and let it slowly take shape, rather than be instantly blogged. I want to write long essays … I want to write a book.”
He wants to spend time with his parents before they die. He wants to be with his “blog-widow” of a husband. He admits he’s had health problems in the last few years, but says they are not HIV-related.
He mentions the site did extremely well. “In just two years, you built a million dollar revenue company, with 30,000 subscribers, a million monthly readers, and revenue growth of 17 percent over the first year,” he wrote.
Sullivan admitted that as he wrote this post, he was “swimming in tears.”
“But this much I know: nothing will ever be like this again, which is why it has been so precious; and why it will always be a part of me, wherever I go; and why it is so hard to finish this sentence and publish this post.”