The USS Clueless (Steven Den Beste) was one of the “A” listers. His blog was huge, and had about 10 thousand hits a day when blogging was fairly new to the web.

Then suddenly Steven signed off. Rishon Rishon was inspired to blog because of the USS Clueless. And he found out why Den Beste chose to quit.

You can forget it. It’s not going to happen. I’ve been suffering for years from a genetically-caused degenerative disease. For the last year or so, the only way I was able to continue posting was by taking increasing doses of very powerful stimulants. (Understand that they were palliative; there’s no cure or treatment for the underlying disease, and no one knows what causes it. The only reason it’s known to be genetic is because it is found in family lines. In my case it was my father’s family.)

Those prescription drugs have serious side effects which I put up with in order to be able to keep writing for the site. But as that year went on, my enjoyment in writing for the site drained away.

It’s entirely possible that there were thousands of satisfied readers who enjoyed what I wrote, but I never heard from most of them. 80% or more of my email consisted of kibitzing, criticism, and other forms of ankle-biting. “Ignore them” someone said, but that’s easy for you to say. Ignoring one or two such letters isn’t too hard. But when it goes on like that day after day, week after week, dozens of such letters each week, I reached the point where writing posts became a duty, something I had to force myself to do, not something I looked forward eagerly to doing. Instead of looking forward to the process of writing, I cringed about the negative email I was guaranteed to receive in response.

As to that purported majority who may have liked what I was writing, I did occasionally hear from them. Such letters usually begin like this: “I’ve been a reader of your site for a very long time, and have long enjoyed what you’ve written. But now I’m writing for the first time because I’ve found something I can criticize.”

That’s not helpful when it comes to encouragement. Steven Den Beste