Walking Away

"I need a crowd of people
But I can’t face them day to day"
Neil Young – On The Beach

The blog world is abuzz with news that Dave Winer will stop blogging sometime this year.

I hope Dave turns his considerable talents to something equally big and interesting. He has kept me entertained, informed, and interested for the past ten years.  And I thank him a thousand thanks for that.

Dave started down this path long before I did and pretty much anyone else did and his decision is encouraging to me because it shows me that there is a way out for me too at some point.

I wrote yesterday in my Too Much Blogging? post that "I don’t think blogging less is the answer, although I may have other reasons for doing that".  The fact is that blogging is both an outlet and a burden for me.

Robert Scoble wrote today:

Anyway, I totally understand why Dave would want to walk away. I’m
staring at hundreds of emails and just don’t want to deal with my inbox
right now. I’m gonna take the rest of the day off and hang out at SXSW.
My sessions are over and now I just have to catch up with the email. I
totally understand why Dave wants to take off from his blog. The
pressure is just incredible to do more, more, more.

That pressure that Robert talks about is completely and totally self imposed, the worst kind.  And when you get your head around the fact that 50,000 people read your blog last month (those were my numbers in February) you get kind of caught up in it.

So Dave is showing the way once again by walking away. 

I hope I can do it as easily when the time comes for me to walk away.