Last post

I've decided to stop updating this blog. There's a whole bunch of reasons why. In no particular order:

1. I feel like this was a record of my time as a grad student, and that period in my life has been over for a while now.

2. I actually have a job that it looks like I might quite enjoy. And, you know, maybe even want to keep. If I post rude things about the other project members on the internet behind their backs, maybe I won't get to keep it after all. And without posting rude things about my colleagues, maybe I won't have enough blogging material (see point 4).

3. In the last couple of weeks, I've become aware that a few colleagues, both at my university, and people I know in a professional setting from other universities, have started reading here. This feels really weird to me.*

For those of you who've been hanging around since forever, you may remember that a couple of years ago a post here was featured on Lifehacker, and I got 7000 hits by lunchtime. My writing muscles were completely paralysed for the next few days, mainly because I had no real sense of who my audience was. This feels a bit like that, except maybe from the opposite direction. I do have a clear sense of who my audience is, and it's become a bit too diverse for comfort. Up until recently, I think most of my readers were other pseudonymous bloggers with whom I had a sort of reciprocal reading arrangement. Now I think maybe close to half my daily hits are people from my real life. And that just feels odd. I'm thinking I might try, you know, TALKING to people instead of blogging.

4. I've run out of parrots. I've posted over 100 photos of parrots, and that's pretty much all there is. Yes, in the whole of Australia.

5. I've heard there's this thing called the Real World. I'm thinking about spending some time in it. Well, either that or on Facebook.

I think I had some more reasons, but I've been putting off writing this post for so long that I've forgotten them all. (Reason #6: I keep on putting off writing here, which is maybe a clue that I don't actually WANT to keep writing here. And I'm totally over doing jobs that I don't want to do for no money. (Thanks, Academia.))

I'm going to keep the blog up here, for a year or so, or until I figure out how to back it up in a form I'm happy with. And you never know, I might find I don't get the hang of this Real World thing, and am back here again this time tomorrow.

We'll see.

Thanks to all you wonderful readers for the past few years of loyalty, hilarity, community and other things that end in -ity. Seriously, though, you've been some of the best things (and people—I'm pretty sure you aren't all inanimate objects) in my life in the past few years. The only reason I've been hesitating to shut this blog down for the past few months is because of you. (And you. And you.) I'm even a little bit grateful to the trolls: it's nice to think I've had my own little pet trolls from time to time. (I wonder if that's an achievement I could list on my CV?)

PS: I'm leaving comments open, because I'd love you to say goodbye if you want to do so, but please don't think I'm fishing for people to ask me not to stop blogging, because if you do that you'll just make me feel guilty and that's no fun for either of us.

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* Shannon, this is not about you. Nor is it about you, Joanna! If I haven't mentioned your name in this footnote, then yes, it probably IS about YOU.