From late June of this year until earlier this month my personal blog stopped working. All previous such outages had been either very brief, lasting only a few days at worst, or they were longer but purely voluntary breaks, while I went off on holiday or just recharged the blogging batteries. But this summer's break was different. For boring bloggage reasons involving comment spam attacks (who by?) and Supergeeks who wouldn't answer the phone, the details of which I will spare you mostly because I don't understand them (although I hope and believe that my Geeks and Supergeeks do), my personal blog stoppage went on, and on, and on, and on, for the best part of three months. The stoppage only stopped about three weeks ago, and when it did I had become so used to not blogging that it actually took me about another week to jump back into it again.

When I started personal blogging, I supposed that if my personal blog was ever seriously interrupted, I would welcome the outlet offered by the other blogs that I have posting rights to, such as the Transport Blog, and of course Samizdata, to write whatever else I felt like blogging that fitted their remits. But instead, I found that I did not want to blog at all. Unable to avail myself of it, I found that blogging, anywhere, had lost its charm. I still wrote some bits for money, although the frequency of that also slowed during the summer. But that was work. It was not, you know, blogging. Why did this happen? Why did losing my own blog mean that my desire to contribute to anyone else's blog evaporated?

The best answer I can offer is that for me, wandering about on the internet looking for stuff to mention on Samizdata or Transport Blog constantly results also in stuff I want to comment on and link to chez moi. So if chez moi is no longer functioning, it's like having a gag stuffed in my face. I do not actually blog about everything I find that is of interest to me. But it hurts if I can't. Starting a personal blog meant that, for me, the internet had finally become fully interactive. I can say whatever I like about it, to it, on it. Being unable to say whatever I liked, I switched back to reading books.