And now, your moment of meta

As a teaser for an article about abandoned blogs, the New York Times writes, "Why do blogs have a higher failure rate than restaurants?" Well, the start-up costs are lower, for starters?

There are a lot of dead blogs out there because there are plenty of reasons to stop blogging. I'm no stranger to abandoned blogs; visitors to my profile can see this blog had a general-interest sibling which didn't even make it to its first birthday. (I killed it even though I had plenty to write about, because I wasn't happy with what I was writing there. Now you know.) If you start blogging to live off your site, and it doesn't happen right away (and probably won't), you might not see the use of the habit. I have written and currently write for blogs that pay, and there's nothing wrong with that, but financial success may not always be proportionate to the amount of time you put in.

As usual, the Times is years behind the already questionable trend. When I started my first blog-before-you-called-it-that, I saw plenty of other writers walk away, great writers, too, writers I liked. But most of them didn't quit over failure to make a fortune, undue fame or ineffectiveness in spurring one's presidential candidate to victory. (That was once my earnestness too.) Just like any other habit, they had to decide for themselves whether it was worth fitting into their undoubtedly full lives.

If anything has changed about my interaction with the Internet, it's that most of my fly-by-night ideas for blogs never make it out of the "Hey, wouldn't it be great if..." stage, because I'd rather start something lasting. But if I felt constrained to blog now about what I did when I started, I might have abandoned ship too.