One Final Post

I must admit I'm feeling some sadness over leaving this blog, and I want to post at least this one more goodbye - hopefully not a goodbye to readers, but to the blog itself.

First of all, don't worry - I'm not leaving and I probably won't be gone that long. In fact, I would have started the new blog already if I could think of a name! My brain always blanks out on names and comes up with horrid joke ones instead. So the top contenders at the moment are, sadly, "My General Opinion Blog, Section B-429038490", "BIB - Body Image and Bigotry", and "Fat Angry Feminist Who Likes to Sleep With Other Women (But Not Too Hairy)". Yeah. If you can think of a better name for a blog about fat acceptance/feminism/homosexuality/any other general opinions I might have, feel free to offer suggestions. I've ruled out all names beginning with "fat" and "big", because there are already so many.

I want to clarify what I'm going to axe and what will stay. The fictional character posts are definitely staying, and I will continue to write them. I'm slow with them, because I try to make it as well thought out as possible, but they're coming. I've gotten some interesting suggestions via email, and will be writing about some of those in the future. Also staying are my latest posts about fat acceptance and most of the posts about my own body image.

I'm going to axe old stuff that I no longer agree with, i.e. posts that state that "fatness is part of the western lifestyle" (i.e.fatness is a lifestyle - this is from my first ever post, and I must say I no longer agree with most of it). Also on the axe list are posts that basically serve to say "up yours, health fascists" (really useful), or any post where the stuff I'm linking to or referring to is no longer available (blogs taken down etc.). And finally, most of the posts that report old news items and stuff that, in retrospect, was sloppily written and posted just to post something that week. Some of these posts have already disappeared. I do have them saved in a Notepad file for myself, if only to read later on what a doofus I was in January 2007.

In other words, a lot of the content, especially the most recent content, is simply going to be transferred over to the new blog. I'm not sure what this means in terms of comments - I have saved the comments to all posts, but it seems complicated to re-post them in the comments section. I might want to edit some posts to include snippets from comments and my responses to them, where the comments gave me a deeper understanding of the issue.

I want to thank all the readers. It means so much to me that people read my writing, like it, and are inspired by it. It makes me feel much better about myself, and I hope the added self esteem also shows in the posts and helps others in turn. We're all in this together - body acceptance is a journey that never ends and none of us are "there" yet.

Stats off Sitemer, as of Dec 17th:

                    -- Site Summary ---                
     Visits

       Total ....................... 33,128       
       Average per Day ................ 154       
       Average Visit Length .......... 1:02       
       This Week .................... 1,077       

     Page Views

       Total ....................... 49,025       
       Average per Day ................ 221       
       Average per Visit .............. 1.4       
       This Week .................... 1,544 

Wow. I just wanna say, I'm really touched that people still read so much. I've barely updated the blog in the past few months, yet I've had so many views. It feels a little surreal that 154 people check the blog daily - some, I know, through a search that has zero to do with Fat Acceptance, but a lot seem to come from Shapely Prose or other FA sites - and that I've had over 30,000 visits. I also see that there are four other bloggers following me. Wow.

If you sent me a comment and I published it but never responded, I'm sorry. Sometimes it was because I was so touched and excited by your comment that I just didn't know how to respond. Sometimes because the comment really made me think and I was going to rethink it and post in a few days, and then forgot. I hope no one has felt their post was dumb or unworthy of a response, because that's not at all what I was thinking. The same goes for any emails I may have forgotten to reply to - I have read them all, and I do appreciate all the viewpoints. I'm just bad at replying.

I hope you will continue to read, comment, email and challenge me.

To quote Krusty the Klown: I wish you all
Merry Christmas!
Happy Hanukkah!
Kwazy Kwanzaa!
A Tip Top Tet!
And a solemn, dignified Ramadan.

See you in the new blog! :)