Tuesday, August 07, 2012

The End, For Now

You all gonna be here when I wake up?

I was planning on waiting a few more days to write this. It was not something I was looking forward to, to say the least. But I hit a natural lull in my blogging and, well, it didn't seem smart to try and get back in the groove given what was looming on the horizon.

Eight years and two months after I launched it shortly after my high school graduation, The Debate Link is going on public hiatus.

I mean "hiatus" seriously -- this is a required break for the duration of my clerkship, where various rules of judicial ethics effectively prevent me from having a high-profile public platform for launching all my half-formed opinions onto the world. Everyone raves about how wonderful clerking is, and I'm excited about it too, but this is one major sacrifice I'm being asked to make. But it's only for a year, I hope. The plan is that once that clerkship ends a year from now, the blog will resume as well.

Still, this is a scary thing for me. The Debate Link has been my baby for nearly my entire adult life. I created it from scratch and since then it has become a really important part of me. It's a space for me to let off steam, incubate new ideas, or just shoot the breeze about random interesting events. It has more or less served as my mind's external hard-drive for years. And, of course, it has sparked innumerable great conversations with friends and colleagues off-line, all of which I treasure.

Some of these things I can still do -- just not in a public setting. I'll move the blog behind a password wall, and I can still write to my heart's content. So in that sense it isn't really a "hiatus", since I'll still be doing some writing (albeit probably at a reduced pace). But taking the blog out of the public eye means giving up one of the most important things of all -- the blogging community. I'm still small-ball enough that getting links from any blog (big or little) tickles me pink. And even more important than inbound links, I've been blessed with some wonderful commenters and met some wonderful people through The Debate Link. It is difficult to let that go -- even temporarily. While I may end up sharing the password with a limited audience, there's no getting around the fact that I'm essentially disconnecting the blog from its larger ecosphere, and that's going to hurt.

But so it is. I'm going to leave this post up on top as my formal farewell until I get back from my vacation in Maryland later this month, and then The Debate Link will officially become password protected.

Again, I want to thank everybody who's been reading me -- those of you who have been around almost since the beginning, and those of you who are relatively new. You've been fantastic.

Just promise me you'll be here when I get back.

6 comments:

DKK said...

Will greatly miss your work. sign me up for a password!

DKK

Barry Deutsch said...

That's too bad! But it's for good reason, and a year is not that long a time anymore.

Barry Deutsch said...

Whoops, accidentally posted without typing the last sentence!

One nice thing about using an RSS reader is that blogs can come and go, and I'll see them when they come back after a month or a year or two.

I'll look forward to your return!

Josh said...

My blog just came back from of a clerkship-imposed hiatus, as yours begins one. Farewell.

Please send me a password. I left my blog open to several loyal readers, and amassed 2,000 posts during my absence. It was very cathartic.

Hal E. said...

This will leave a serious void in my at-work time wasting. I'd love a password if you decide to widen your audience; otherwise, I hope you manage to store up some inspiration during your clerkship that will come pouring out afterwards. I look forward to reading more when you return.

Sarah Cannon said...

You'll stay in my reader for whenever you become public again. Enjoy the new job! Good luck in Minnesota!