I appreciate it. I really do. Thanks to JoeUser, I understood blogging. I realized that it can be an enjoyable, cathartic and at times intellectually stimulating exercise.
Unfortunately, as of late, it has been none of those things. I think about blogging and I feel weighed down. I stop by JoeUser and am overwhelmed by the torrent of Stardock support type articles/Wincustomize cross-posts that I understand are just part and parcel of the new and improved JoeUser. I swing by to read an interesting discussion and instead see the same old players spouting the same old, tired cliches. I look for new blood, but instead find myself awash in nearly unreadable babble.
I just don't even remotely enjoy it anymore. And, perhaps most importantly, I realize the issue really rests on my shoulders.
I can't stand the new JoeUser. It is ugly. It is not user friendly. Everything looks the same. "My" blog looks the same as "your" blog looks the same as "his" blog looks the same as "her" blog (I use quotation marks as I feel it is disingenuous to really consider these exercises in sameness to be personal blogs). The truth is, I no longer feel that I actually have a blog here. Rather, I write on one of JoeUser's generic, cookie cutter pages. I can't customize my blog, I can't add what I want to, and I can't even write articles here and save them to publish later.
And the ads, the ads, the ads, ads, ads and ads! I raise a mighty single finger salute the intrusive, offensive, garish ads.
I'm tired of the community. Most of the voices who yell the loudest continue to be the most hollow. Again, I can blame no one but myself, as I haven't contributed any decent articles for months now. I'm part of the problem.
So, I shall remove myself from the situation. There will be no flurry of deleting old articles. They shall remain here. I'm not swearing the site off, as I will still use Google Reader to keep up on some of the folks here. I just won't blog here anymore. For a time now I have been blogging at my
blog, and then cross-posting them to this site. But it just isn't worth it anymore.
The fam (SanChonino and Cedarbird), Dynamaso, MasonM, Little Whip, Tova, ForeverSerenity, Texas Wahine, Parated2K, Jill and Brad, and Roy, I will still be reading. If I see some of you around
my blog, I would be honored. If I don't, I understand.
Thanks for the free ice cream, I just can't stomach the flavor anymore.