Don Surber is giving up blogging:
After 7 years of blogging, I am quitting. I am exhausted. It was simply too much work. I am still employed by the Charleston Daily Mail and still writing editorial and columns and performing the sundry other tasks that go with any job.
Blogging was something extra. I loved blogging because I came in contact with readers directly. But over the past few months I realized I cannot continue doing both. I ain’t Superman.
I will miss you all and I appreciate the support from those who have emailed me.
Don has been one of the leading lights in blogging, so it’s sad to see him go.
I understand it. I really do.
I often joke about blogger burnout, but it’s a diagnosed condition for a reason.
The feeling that your blog is all that stands between the Great Mainstream Media-Nutroots Conspiracy and the abyss can create imagined pressure.
If only I could do one more post about XYZ it would change everything. Damn it, no one is listening to me!
Independent conservative bloggers are a dying breed, I’m sorry to say. They either burnout, or they join an established website.
Yet the walls still have to be guarded by independent bloggers who bear a greater responsibility than you could possibly fathom, and while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, you want us on that wall, you need us on that wall.
Thank you for your service, Don.
Update 4-29-2012: Prof. Reynolds has not given up yet, thankfully, because his spreading around the linkage is what keeps a lot of people going. Pat Austin has a partial body count.
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Comments
Amen.
If you really want to appreciate the frustration of being a conservative blogger, just go to Michelle Malkin’s comment threads and see how even there, mainstream GOP commenters are hostile to conservative commenters. Just about every conservative blog thread everywhere has been taken over by the conventional Republicans and their philosophy of conservatives can’t win so vote for the liberal Democrat running as a Republican. If Michelle can’t attract enough conservative commenters into her threads to outnumber the nose holders, what hope is there for everyone else?
But how would you…a self-identified crypto-Collectivist…know the FIRST thing about who is…or is not…a Conservative?
Remember, Fillie, I have you writing what your TRUE views are.
Okay folks. Raggie was tossed off of Malkin for being a RINO attack troll and never got over it. Just wait for it. And since he is pulling his same stunts here now, let me post my famous Pasadena Phil Rule:
I NEVER vote for Democrats or liberals, ESPECIALLY when they run as Republicans.
That means exactly what it says. To be called a collectivist by someone who yesterday defended the Republicans form repealing the Glass Steagall Act speaks for itself. For the Republicans to agree to lay off of Fannie/Freddie in exchange for repealing Glass Steagall was a great compromise according to Raggie. So who is the collectivist?
“Raggie was tossed off of Malkin for being a RINO attack troll”
That is a lie. Any of you can check for yourselves.
Fillie…with some of his “good buddies”…conducted an email campaign behind my back with Malkin to see me dropped, because I’d exposed him as a liar and bully repeatedly.
As here, on this thread…
Glass-Steagall was a COLLECTIVIST wet dream. (A Fillie wet dream.)
“When we recall that stand-alone institutions, both commercial and investment, also failed during the crisis, and that all of them acquired mortgage-backed securities (which they had always been allowed to do, by the way), the Glass-Steagall “repeal” looks more and more like a red herring that appeals to people whose belief system requires them to find some way a Fed-fueled bubble could have been stopped had the right regulatory structure been in place.
(The problem with those who point to Glass-Steagall is not that they’re radical. It’s that they’re not nearly radical enough. They think the system as is, shot through with moral hazard at every level, and presided over by a market-defying central bank, is of its nature stable and without fault; we just need a few regulations.)
http://www.tomwoods.com/blog/repeal-of-glass-steagall-had-nothing-to-do-with-the-crisis/
Fillie wrote this the other night…
“I maintain that the heart of both the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street is the same.”
https://legalinsurrection.com/2012/04/the-other-front/comment-page-1/#comment-332661
Fillie HATES the free market, and distrusts it.
The 1% are so dominant these days that the very idea of democracy and national sovereignty now represent the final barriers preventing them from declaring themselves to be gods. The OWN our entire society, including “both” Democratic parties. We won’t be able to do anything about it until see the problem for what it is and impose the will of the great majority on the corrupt elite minority. And we better do it soon because after November, something wicked this way cometh no matter who wins the election.
https://legalinsurrection.com/2012/04/the-other-front/comment-page-1/#comment-332661
Look at how he meets challenges.
Can you two take this personal dispute elsewhere. Phil gets a response and then that’s it.
Your house, Prof.
I am having a little difficulty seeing how quoting another poster and source material from the Mises Institute is “personal”, but I will withdraw.
Sad! ok, Professor… meditate, exercise, eat right, get enough sleep and have an adult beverage once in a while, but don’t give up the ship. We need you!
And thanks to you, Professor.
Yes, yes we do!! Thank you for standing on that wall, giving us all a place to go to find common sense, logic, reason, camaraderie, and humor to buoy our spirits.
To you, Professor, and all your contributing bloggers at Legal Insurrection, standing in the gap: Thank you!
Don has been the single bright light emanating from my home state of West By God. He turned off blog comments, so it is difficult to even say goodbye.
His next-to-last blog entry, Advice to Journalists, contains a Surberism by which we can remember him. He qualifies his borrowed syntax by first apologizing to Waylon Jennings:
‘Bye Don, we will keep up with your escapades through the Charleston Daily Mail website.
Bummer. He was always my first read in the morning. I’m gonna miss him.
Keep up the good work, Professor. However, consider that your contribution to our society comes in two forms: intellectual and family. Do what you can, when you can, but make sure your priorities are right. Not only should you avoid burnout, but also preserve your greatest assets.
That said, we do need objective input from technical and objective resources. Thank you for your service.
As for Surber, I have not followed him; but, anyone who voluntarily acts in good faith should be commended.
I am going to miss Don.
Don will be missed. I thought maybe he was going to have second thoughts when the Goodbye thread went away for a couple of days..but here we are now. We can still follow him at Facebook..still active there.
At any rate..sorry to see Don hang it up as he was daily reading for alot of us Im sure.
I started blogging a little over 8 years ago and have taken a number of breaks along the way. But after a while, I started feeling like I was beating my head against the wall and was unable to add anything worthwhile to the conversation. I didn’t want to turn into someone who simply regurgitates other people’s words. I still felt a passion and understand the importance of being a voice for conservatism. But I guess I just ran out of things to say (well, that and the discouragement of feeling like it doesn’t matter).
I still keep my blog. But it’s only about music now. So I really do understand the “burn-out” issue (not that my little corner of the Internet was all that important).
As for Don Surber, his blog will be greatly missed. It has long been among my daily (sometimes more than a few times a day) reads. Along with Doug Ross, Weasel Zippers, Newsbusters and, of course, Legal Insurrection, I don’t miss a day. I still follow Don on Facebook and thankfully, he has increased his presence there. I recommend “friending” him there.
Don has been a joy to read. I don’t know how any of you independent conservative bloggers can write as much as you do and still function!
I just contribute to a site, and that’s hard enough.
I wish Don well.
And I thank you, Professor for saving this country one post at a time.
I mean that.
Bill, you’re doing a great job. The online environment is unstable, but this has been my favorite community for some time. Unfortunately my financial situation does not let me express my approval tangibly; hopefully that will change.
However, my advice to every blogger is: if it’s not fulfilling, stop doing it. (I deliberately said fulfilling instead of enjoyable because the latter is not the correct term for people like marathoners, high-altitude mountaineers, and high-traffic bloggers.)
Remember the Bhagavad Gita: You have a right to the work, but not to the outcome. Since so many American-born “gurus” are Jewish, I thought I’d throw that in! 😉
Kidding aside: I’m no mover and shaker, let alone a hero. American decline may or may not be reversible, but if worst comes to worst I want to tell my conscience that at least I spoke up.
It’s sad to see Don quit.
Professor, if you ever feel burned out, why not take a week or two off? Just put up a “On Vacation. Be Back (Date)” announcement. I seriously doubt you’d lose any readers if they know you’re just taking a rest and that LI is still a going concern.
Thanks for making the world seem a bit less insane.
Don was one heck of a blogger. Right up there with the best. His was one of the blogs I would visit several times a day but especially at 5:01 PM to see what The Scorekeeper thought important that day. It’s amazing that Don could do such a magnificent job 7 days a week.
His blog may be dead, but at least he’s still on Facebook.
Speaking truth to power ain’t easy. Sad news.
I also enjoyed Mr. Surber’s blog. I occasionally commented there, and it was good of him to let folks do so.
I do wonder what will happen to ‘daveyboy’ 🙂
Stay well and stay strong, Mr. Surber.
Don,
You’d done a great job, keep up your health and God bless!
101st fighting keyboardist (Ret)
blog maker and a bleeding heart lib breaker
we need more bloggers to step up. I don’t “blog” much but have setup platform software so my forum members can run their own blog off my vps server. I need to actually start writing more though, the more we spread the word the better off we are.
Link love always helps the motivation to keep blogging for us “hobby” bloggers. It’s like crack for blogging. I blog around a busy work schedule and family life. Getting linked or recognized as the “Blog of the Day” always helps and is greatly appreciated.
I like Don Surber a lot and I hope this is more of a sabbatical than a retirement. And I am also very glad we have you, Professor Jacobson, on our side!
[…] (typeof(addthis_share) == "undefined"){ addthis_share = [];}Professor William Jacobson laments Don Surber’s recent decision to quit blogging. It is probably just a coincidence that Don, one of the most valuable members of the conservative […]
Yeah, been there; stopped doing that. It helped to narrow down what I was going to blog about to “stuff that other people weren’t going to say.”
It is a sad day. Don was a must read everyday. This makes three great conservative voices we’ve lost this year. Don at least wasn’t a tragedy, unlike Breitbart, and my friend Carroll “Lex” Lefon who blogged as Neptunus Lex and was killed flying a mission at TOPGUN earlier this year.
I still thoroughly enjoy the medium and a lot of my conscious thought is spent thinking about how I can turn what I’m reading, doing or feeling into a blog post. I’ve turned away from politics to some extent and I think that’s a healthy thing. It’s probably what has kept me from burning out.
There’s a big world out there and we’re blessed to live in 2012 when we can share things with each other via the web. If all you do is scream about politics, I would think that the constant agitation would drive you to quit eventually.
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