Ask JKM a Question: Slouching Towards Bethlehem?

A reader and fellow blogger named David writes:

“I’m a blogger too, so don't lie to me.  I know that you have probably thought about this. You've been at this a long time.

A lot of bloggers compose a final post while they are still writing their blogs.

So my question is: have you composed your last post even in your head if not on the screen, and if so what are the contents of it?”

David, are you trying to get rid of me?

Seriously, I agree that all bloggers think about “the end,” even if fleetingly, at one point or another during the lifetime of a blog.   

Sometimes, their blog has lived a very long time, and the author has simply had the opportunity to say everything he or she wanted to say.

Sometimes they write that final post because they are tired or frustrated. 

Sometimes they write it because a better opportunity has come up, somewhere else. 

Sometimes they write such a post for the sake of posterity, I suppose.

Usually, as I said, however, that thought is fleeting.  

But there is something, perhaps, in the very nature of blogging that makes a writer want to have the last word, and grant the ongoing journal some sense of closure…like finishing a (really long...) book, for example. 

I really hate going to a blog I love and seeing that it just withered on the vine, that posts just stopped coming for no apparent reason. 

I always wonder: what happened?  

Is the blogger still with us? What made him or her give up writing?  

Too many really fine blogs have ended in that fashion.

So I do feel that closure is important for both the writer and reader. I am grateful for all the great bloggers I have read over the years who decided to compose that final post, and tell us that they were moving on.

If and when I stop blogging, I know this: I’ll be closer to my destination -- whatever that destination happens to be -- and I’ll be a different person/writer/blogger than I am today, right now.  

So, my final blog post will come at the end of the blog, and hopefully reflect the journey that I have taken, in its last steps.  

Writing it now wouldn't reflect or be true to the journey I described.

So I can tell you, definitively, I haven't written a final post.

Things could always change for me (like the end of Net-Neutrality; the creation of a tiered-Internet that relegates my blog to a slow lane...), but right now, I don't foresee the end. 

If readers keep coming, I'll keep writing..

On that front, my blog audience has changed or rolled over three or four times in the nearly 13 years since I started. Those who read it now aren't necessarily those who started with it. Some folks have outgrown me, I guess, and some new folks have found my work and become regular, current readers. 

The numbers wax and wane. I'll have a great year, then I have a flat year, then a better year.  My blog has never been a big, flashy "it" blog or boutique destination, but it doesn't have to be, either.  I'm just happy to have a platform to write, every single day, and I'm delighted to have a consistent, lovely, intelligent readership.

I am a full-time instructor at a community college for a year now (teaching film, among other subjects), so it has become harder to blog every single day, multiple times, but that doesn't mean that I plan to stop blogging.  Some weeks, I have to rely on a rerun post or too, to get through.

But honestly, there's too much exciting stuff happening, and I enjoy blogging too much to entirely stop. A new Star Trek series, new Twin Peaks and more X-Files (season 11!) are all on the way. 

So I may not always blog 1400 times a year every year from here to eternity, but nor do I imagine just stopping cold.

Therefore, I hope you'll still be reading...and I promise not to spring "the end" on you. At this moment, I have 737 blog posts banked in the queue.

And in the meantime, perhaps I'll devote some mental energy to what my last post might look like...but probably not.  

I'll tackle that on the day the end comes. 

Don’t forget to ask me your questions at Muirbusiness@yahoo.com