Bloggers come and Bloggers go

I just received a message today from the person responsible for getting me interested in the world of blogging, the first person whose blog I ever read on a regular (or even irregular) basis, stating that she has decided to get out of blogging.

I'm hoping this isn't true, that maybe I'm misinterpreting her statement. Or at least isn't true forever. I will miss her blog.

The second blogger I read on a regular basis has also backed way off from her old blogging frequency. I'm hoping she hasn't decided to leave the blogosphere, too.

A lot of other bloggers I used to read regularly have also cut back from their blogging. Was blogging just a fad? Or was it a phase that everyone else but me is outgrowing?

One blogger I read and interacted with regularly - I never linked to her on the sidebar, some keen-eyed readers may remember some mysterious conversations in the comments - stopped posting about a year ago. She was in the Air Force, stationed in Germany, and had...well, I think it was anorexia, because the "binges" she spoke of were not quantities of food that would qualify for normal definitions of bulimia. She was even somewhat embraced by the shockingly large pro-anorexia online community, though she herself was never really pro-anorexia. In her final posts she was being discharged from the Air Force and being sent back to California in the middle of last year's heat wave. She stopped posting after that. Maybe she was institutionalized. I worry that she died.

Another blogger I worry about is Melanie from Hyperextended Joints. Her last post was January 10 of this year, and she gave no sign of wanting to get out of blogging. The last words on her blog worry me: "This will be continued later. I need to go pick up Alison from school now." Could something have happened to her while picking up her friend? I am guessing that "Alison" is Allison Trzop, who is mentioned in Melanie's profile. I don't see many of Allison Trzop's fingerprints on the Internet after an October 2006 essay that she published. I've tried other junior-grade detective work but can't find any traces of Melanie anywhere.

A few other people have backed away from blogging for reasons I'm somewhat aware of. I wish they would come back, but I understand why they're not here now.

Today I came across an odd situation. While searching for...well, never mind what I was searching for, I came across the April 2003 archive of a blog called pickle juice. I flicked around for a little bit, and came away with these tidbits: cute redheaded woman, posting under the name Natalie, chose the address demonthighs.blogspot.com, married, has a daughter...good writer, nice photographs, pleasant stories, the sort of blogger I could see myself reading regularly. I decided to jump out to her main page and saw that the most recent entry is from July 31, 2005, and starts like this:

Before anything gets blown out of proportion or whatever, let me say this: I am, seriously, facing three years in jail.

And then it goes on to:

In the meantime, I've been "asked to leave" my mother's house and am crashed with my sister. BUT! But today I managed to finagle a sleeping room across the hall from her apartment, so that's pretty cool. A room with a door? For the first time in six months I'll actually have a door! That's pretty boss.

So. What happened between April of 2003 and July 31, 2005 to upend this woman's life like this? The answers may all be on her blog. And why hasn't she posted since July 31, 2005? That may be revealed sometime in August, 2008...or maybe earlier.