According to the stat counter down there in the sidebar, this blog has had approaching 100,000 pageviews in the (nearly) 4 years of its existence. Which is nice. And it's enough.
I've been toying for a while with the idea of quitting permanently. Various events recently have hurried up my thought process on this. Part of me (the opinionated bit) will find it tricky - I can't find something interesting or potentially useful without wanting to go 'hey! anyone seen this?' and will have to start learning the discipline of silence. Or I could just email it to the Church Mouse.
The site will stay up for a while, to give people a chance to harvest anything that might have been useful. Comments will stay on for a couple of weeks, but then get switched off permanently. Once the only traffic here becomes Google searches for Dave Walker cartoons, (a surprisingly high number), then the whole thing will get deleted. That's for purely selfish reasons: it'll be much easier to avoid the temptation to blog if I don't have a blog!
Thankyou to everyone for coming to visit, comment, argue etc. I hope it's been worth your while. Thanks to Steve Tilley, Ruth Gledhill, Matt Wardman and Maggi Dawn for encouragement and inspiration. It's now time for me to put my energies into other things. If you feel like using the time saved from reading my twaddle to pray for me, that would be great.
Alternatively, for local stuff try the Yeovil Blog, for a valiant attempt to make Thomas Hardy funny (almost impossible) try Lost in Wessex, or another of Gary's projects for a former Beaker Person My Gospel Right or Wrong. For new reading matter, try Charlie Peer's excellent new blog. Me, I'll be here. Staying on Twitter for the moment, but we'll see how that goes. If it becomes too distracting, then it might fall victim to the cuts...
Thanks for your company. God bless. David
So long, and thanks for all the fish.
ReplyDeleteDavid, thanks for the blog, always one of my first ports of call. Hope everything goes well in the real job and real life.
ReplyDeleteDavid,
ReplyDeleteThanks for your blog - it's one of my favourites in my reader feed, I always look forward to your musings each morning.
Blessings
Mark
I feel quite sad. You've been a bit like 6Music to me or an under-visited corner shop that closes. I didn't drop in enough but was glad you were there. Wait, Wait. 6Music has a reprive.
ReplyDeleteWell I'm sad about that- I come here quite a lot!
ReplyDeleteI hope you reconsider- you had a niche (that gave me courage to find my niche).
Close it if you must (though I hope you change your mind), but PLEASE don't delete it! You never know who has linked to your posts, and when someone reading something that interests them follows a "Read more here" only to get a 404 error, that's cruel!
ReplyDeleteThanks David,
ReplyDeleteYour blog was part of what inspired me to start blogging. I'll miss reading it.
Andrew
Thanks for all you've given to the Christian bloggosphere over the years and for the inspiration and information you have shared with me and I'm sure many others. Hope you keep on Tweeting; we have an Ashes series to bite our fingernails through this winter.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your blogging. It'll be sad to not see updates in my Google Reader any more. Don't delete it!
ReplyDeleteWill miss your blog, David. Thanks for all the work you've put into it.
ReplyDeleteIt's a pity you're stopping. I've enjoyed your blog in my Google Reader. Like others, can I try to persuade you not to delete it? Think of all the broken links it'll leave behind, the chaos, the disappointment, the children's sad little faces...
ReplyDeleteOk, that was too much. But seriously. Don't delete it. Please.
Your blog will be missed; all the best. Thanks for the tip-off about Charlie Peer's blog, will definitely check that out.
ReplyDeleteCheers David.. but does that now mean we'll have to meet face to face to share opinions (or will you email instead)?
ReplyDeleteok I'll try to avoid deleting it, but I won't be restarting. I'm sure someone will fill the niche if it's worth filling!
ReplyDeleteHuw - opinions? moi?
facebook? you can post tweets there
ReplyDeleteUnsure who to post as. But so long and thanks for inspiration, challenge and laughs.
ReplyDeleteOr is this just the prelude to your new position at Southwark?
Thanks for being you, David.
ReplyDeleteDavid,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the journey - it was fun while it lasted.
Prayers abound for you and yours and the ministry,
Vic (the Vicar)
May the vengeful God of dark-fibre have mercy on you :) - thanks for all your comments on my blog over the last year or so.
ReplyDeleteI'll miss it David - your thoughts and findings were always useful - but I'm glad for you if it can free up some time
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteThank you, we will miss you. Your thoughts have always been good to read. Thanks for the roundup of other blogs at the end!
ReplyDeleteAh well, another one bites the dust. Cranmer has gone off on a wabbler and now you have decided to do one. Good luck though mate, we all have to do what we do.
ReplyDeleteLife gets stranger by the day for me though. I suffer from all kinds of anxiety and depression, and I seek answers all the time. I was in a graveyard the other day with a work mate, we were skiving out of the way. He made a weird comment which made me think some. He said that for all we know we could be surrounded by ghosts of dead people who are just walking around the place invisible to us.
I told him that this is total crap because why would they all congregate in the cemetery. Why would they not just move on somewhere else? After all, who the hell would spend all day in a graveyard? Weird eh? The thing about me though is that I'm never too far away from the idea of a length of rope and a tree. I often sit in a graveyard and enjoy the idea of total peace from being dead and buried. No stress at all, but there again I read a quote somewhere about how being alive is to experience suffering and pain as well as sharing and love - you know, the whole range of life's experiences, this is life: to be alive.
Guess I will hang on for a bit just to see where it all takes me. I have this deep suspicion that there is some kind of God. I reckon that evolution and stuff is definitely done to confuse the hell out of us, you know, just to maintain the quality of faith so that nothing can ever be certain, just faith and belief. Don't ask me why, this is what we are here to experience - to be kept guessing all the time.
I guess that the best we can do is put one foot in front of the other and plod on till the reaper gets us. Actually this is not as depressing as it can sound, just consider it all. We are pretty strange beings really and I refuse to accept that it has all been a remote accident of chance and circumstance. There is the inner voice and the exterior world of reflected light and sound vibrations, smells and tastes, and all the variations of hot and cold; and the soul just looks out through the fogs and dark glass then smiles back with hints and winks. Just kept guessing all the time.
What would Heaven be for me? It would be peace, just peace, left alone. Loneliness is a killer though, so this could even mean non existence, you know, like before you were born when you have nothing to recollect. Peace could mean going back to that stage of not existing and God how peaceful it can be in a cemetery thinking of this. Loneliness and boredom are killers, maybe this is why we are tested to the hilt all the time. Sometimes it all just takes the piss and goes too far though mate, it really does.
Ha. As one of your once-every-six-months visitors, I'd've been well upset if you had deleted: would have screwed my links from the SPCK/SSG blog, and that story's not over yet as per today's post. Glad you're still tweeting though.
ReplyDeleteNow gonna grab me an archive of your SPCK posts just to be on the safe side. Happy daze, bro!