I hate to do this.

I’ve been struggling to build this blog up for a year and a half; just recently - and not without much begging - I’ve had some good fortune with links from other bloggers and seen my traffic climb from a handful of much-treasured regulars to about 100 hits a day. As pathetic as that is, it was progress, and I was getting more excited about trying to reach out further.

In the meantime, the rest of my life has been circling the drain for a decade or more, and is starting to pick up speed. For those who don’t know, I have been “on leave” (i.e., they haven’t seen me in years) from a doctoral program where I specialize in bioethics. But I need to finish that program to have any real place in this profession - blogging isn’t it. And I desperately need to do something about my negative cashflow situation. Spending all day reading blogs and working up one lengthy post has become another way to avoid doing the things I really need to be doing but don’t really like. Several of my friends have made pointed comments to that effect, and some have threatened to take over my blog if I don’t get my shit more in order.

Most importantly, I’m up against a deadline for making some important, possibly very valuable, moves in my career - predicated on my doing something serious about the PhD I’ve been bogged down on for years now. And as much as I don’t like to see it, this blog is essentially an end in itself, but is blocking my way to other things that serve more important ends. So, some serious prioritizing is in order.

I’ve decided to put Sufficient Scruples on the back burner, for a while at least. Already, I’m only making an average of 4-6 posts per week, but simply thinking that I should be posting every day is enough to eat up my time. So I’m going to cut back to 1-2 posts per week, maybe mostly on weekends.

It hurts to let this go, and to think about what I know this will do to my traffic volume. In particular, I feel like I’m letting down the few regulars who have been coming by. I want to thank you for all the interest and support you’ve shown. Be aware that this is in service of something that means a lot more to me personally, and will also let me play a bigger role in the issues we both care about. But I’m sorry to be running out on you.

Do come by every week or so, please! I will still post content here, but it will be much lower in volume. I’ll try to make it up in quality. And feel free to e-mail me. I rarely hear from readers, but I’d like to. As for you lurkers out there (yes, you at the American Physical Society with your two-hour browsing times - and you at the megachurch down in Dallas who’s been coming by every day for weeks - and the many others), say hello! I don’t know who you are (Sitemeter gives me your IP address but can’t know your username, so don’t worry), but I’m very glad to see you on the blog; feel free to drop me a line at the “Contact” link above.

Thanks to everyone who does or has read this blog; thanks to all those who have commented or e-mailed or linked; thanks especially to those who cared enough about me personally to offer feedback on the larger context it sits in. I hope you won’t disappear, as I won’t, but I’ll be sorry to see less of you from now on.

Best wishes.