Andrew Sullivan writes,
I want to spend some real time with my parents, while I still have them, with my husband, who is too often a ‘blog-widow’, my sister and brother, my niece and nephews, and rekindle the friendships that I have simply had to let wither because I’m always tied to the blog. And I want to stay healthy. I’ve had increasing health challenges these past few years. They’re not HIV-related; my doctor tells me they’re simply a result of fifteen years of daily, hourly, always-on-deadline stress. These past few weeks were particularly rough – and finally forced me to get real.
We’ll have more to say – and we’re sure you will as well – in due course. I particularly want to take some time to thank my indispensable, amazing colleagues in a subsequent post. For the time being, auto-renewals have been suspended and the pay-meter has been disabled. While we’re in this strange, animated suspension, I just wanted to take one post to thank you personally, the readers, founding members and subscribers to the Dish.
And this
You were there before I met my husband; you were there when I actually got married; and when I finally got my green card; and when Dusty – who still adorns the masthead – died. I can’t describe this relationship outside the rather crude term of “mass intimacy” but as I write this, believe me, my eyes are swimming with tears.
How do I say goodbye? How do I walk away from the best daily, hourly, readership a writer could ever have? It’s tough. In fact, it’s brutal. But I know you will understand. Because after all these years, I feel I have come to know you, even as you have come to see me, flaws and all. Some things are worth cherishing precisely because they are finite. Things cannot go on for ever. I learned this in my younger days: it isn’t how long you live that matters. What matters is what you do when you’re alive. And, man, is this place alive.
And finally
When I write again, it will be for you, I hope – just in a different form. I need to decompress and get healthy for a while; but I won’t disappear as a writer.
But this much I know: nothing will ever be like this again, which is why it has been so precious; and why it will always be a part of me, wherever I go; and why it is so hard to finish this sentence and publish this post.
This is a majorly big deal in my life. I have loved Andrew Sullivan and hated him.. but each time I wanted depth and perspective on any given issue, I would stop randomly clicking headlines and simply go to his website for that missing piece of the larger puzzle. Sullivan has been wrong on some things.. right on some things. But his blog and opinion was always an evolving work in progress.. he brought with him site intelligence and the highest degree of analysis that could be found online..
His live blogs of the State of the Union speeches each year could not be missed..
And to a degree, his little comic logo even inspired the CoalSpeaker’s emblem that rests atop this page.
Indeed, Andrew Sullivan and his site has meant a lot to me..
I certainly hope he’s not gone for good. And as a fellow blogger, I can say this.. when you do this type of thing, you never go for good. I sense we’ll see and hear from Sullivan soon.
But..go he must.
I will miss him.
Andrew Sullivan writes a goodbye to readers!? Enough blogging!?
