Crickets

During this past month of daily blogging, I have spent some time poking around in nearly seven years of my archives and I was reminded that at a certain point in the history of this little blog, I was part of a small circle of bloggers who visited each other regularly, rooted one another on in writing and in life, and in short became, somehow, more than merely faceless strangers at the other end of some cyber connection.

When I click the links on the comments from those old posts, they lead mostly to dead ends--non-existent profiles, blogs that haven't been updated in three or four years, unclaimed domains that are available at a low, low price. Most of my bloggy friends from those early days have been reabsorbed into their "real" lives, leaving barely a trace. This happened so gradually that I barely realized it at the time--absorbed as I was in some of my own "real" life distractions. It felt like I just looked up one day and everyone had snuck out of the room.

I've never seriously considered "closing up shop," but a ridiculous amount of time often passed between posts. As I mentioned in an earlier post this month, NaBloPoMo posts have consistently outnumbered posts from the rest of the year combined.

Worse, I have rarely commented on any of the many, many blogs I have saved in a favorites file--blogs I discovered after the quiet collapse of my first little blogging community, blogs I continue to read with regularity. Commenting on an established blog--especially one with a group of regular commenters feels a little like crashing a party. And, too, the idea that someone might click the profile link on my comment and find her way back to my blog and find a six-month-old half-hearted post didn't make commenting any easier.

All of this is to say that this month's NaBloPoMo and especially the opportunity it's provided to make new bloggy friends has really been a salve on my poor little blogger's soul. I'm looking forward to whatever's next.