A completely unrelated picture, but it’s always nice to have something to look at!!
Yesterday was a little sad – I lost a follower from my blog. It’s not something that I usually pay much attention to… followers come and go, although losing one is relatively uncommon and each week I generally make a net gain.
But this follower was different – this was someone who wrote a blog that I enjoyed reading and who put up posts that I returned to to re-read. Alas no more: not only has Yambean stopped blogging, she has completely erased herself from WordPress and deleted her blog ‘The Great Dorset Vegetable Experiment’. No more can I return to her musings on aquaponics, ducks, diet and her fabulous recipes (none of which I saved); no more can I follow the interesting links she had on her blog pages; and no more will I exchange thoughts about growing strange crops and the state of the world.
The worst thing is that the only way I knew Yambean was through her blog and without that, she is lost to me.
So this is a little request. Even if you don’t think it is the case, there are likely to be people out there who value what you write in your blog. Even if you only add to it occasionally, don’t abandon it and your readers, followers and friends. We may be geographically distant, but we share a lot here in the bolgosphere. So, keep in touch; and if your life changes, do tell us about it, I’m sure we’d all love to hear!
So, Yambean… if you ever read this post, please know that I miss you and I’d love to read how you are getting on in your new unencumbered life in the sun. And the rest of you… keep on blogging!
Louise
/ August 8, 2013Thanks to Goodle, the cached version will still be available for a little while longer if there’s anything you want to save http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:cmLcgYgICHMJ:thegdve.wordpress.com/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk
The Snail of Happiness
/ August 8, 2013Thank you…. I will check that out right away
davidprosser
/ August 8, 2013It is a terrible shame when we lose people we’ve become friendly with. They forget they leave a gap. I always hope when I’ve become friends with a fellow blogger they’ll trust me with their address to send a Christmas or birthday card to. That way if they depart from the screen they may decide not to depart from m life.
xxx Hugs xxx
The Snail of Happiness
/ August 8, 2013I’m surprised how sad I feel at this particular loss, but it is a real shame.
Perhaps next time I’m up in north Wales, I’ll be tracking you down for a cuppa!!
The toymaker
/ August 8, 2013I have another blog that I wrote about toy making but when I started the MA I stopped posting on it. Preferring to write about… writing. But I didn’t erase it or make it disappear. It still sits there and helps people making toys. As far as I am concerned it can sit there until no one looks at it, but while people are still visiting I will keep it there. 🙂
The Snail of Happiness
/ August 8, 2013And, you never know, you might be inspired to return to it one day! I’d love to check it out – is it on WordPress?
The toymaker
/ August 8, 2013It is a wordpress blog – http://toymakers0tales.wordpress.com/
And I may one day go back – it’s good to keep all my options open. 🙂
The Snail of Happiness
/ August 8, 2013Thank you – nice!
Esculent Etc
/ August 8, 2013This is a sweet post; and I hope your erstwhile pal (of sorts) Yambean comes back because that sounds like quite an interesting blog which I had, sadly, not come across (to my knowledge). As you say it’s easy to think that you’re just writing for yourself and the microscopic bacteria living under the dust specks on your monitor (well, my monitor at any rate – I’m sure you aren’t as slatternly as me). I’m actually looking for some more edible gardening/practical permaculture (UK or Europe based ideally, just because the information is easier for me to apply to my own circs) – I shall start with re-examining the blog rolls of the ones I already like to make sure another one doesn’t get away!
The Snail of Happiness
/ August 8, 2013My dust has dust! There are so many things more interesting to do than housework!
I think that I probably take the blogs I read for granted a bit and this has brought it home to me that I should find a way to store some of the information… fortunately I have got to know some of the writers a bit better and think that I could maintain contact, but it’s sad to see content disappear.
Map of Time
/ August 8, 2013That’s too bad. It would be lovely if she happens across your blog post though!
The Snail of Happiness
/ August 8, 2013Fingers crossed!
metan
/ August 9, 2013I have realised recently that I communicate with many of you bloggers far more often than I do with most of my family! It is funny how people who can be on the other side of the planet can become very dear to you.
I hope that you manage to find your lost blogger again and if not, that others read this post and realise out how important they are to people they will likely never meet. It might encourage them to go on when the writing gets hard.
The Snail of Happiness
/ August 9, 2013So true – but then (to paraphrase) you can choose the blogs you follow but you can’t choose your family!!
Some lovely people have directed me to cached parts of the GDVE website, so I can at least ‘harvest’ some of the recipes.
Sharon
/ August 9, 2013You can also find many pages from this blog using the “Wayback machine” of the Internet archive. Go to http://archive.org/web/web.php and enter the address you would like to find. I put the blog’s root adress, http://thegdve.wordpress.com/
The results page will take you to captures of that site from different dates, and you can often navigate a few pages in, for example the latest capture of the “recipes” tag is at http://web.archive.org/web/20130727042029/http://thegdve.wordpress.com/category/recipes/
I hope this helps!
The Snail of Happiness
/ August 9, 2013Thank you, Sharon… I will make use of this facility straight away.
nanacathy2
/ August 12, 2013I agree, one of my favourite bloggers just ground to a halt, and I have no idea how she is, and one just vanished completely like your experience and it does leave a gap. Change which is is actually a loss I am realizing is the hardest of changes to deal with!
The Snail of Happiness
/ August 12, 2013Yes, there are several bloggers that I follow who seem to have stopped writing… often people who had a project that they were excited about (chickens, aquaponics, writing) but which must have become either mundane or excessively time-consuming. I guess that those of us who write about more day-to-day stuff never run out of things to say!!
I must say, I’m missing the updates on your crochet squares now that project has finished… I hope to see what you have turned them into eventually.