Wednesday, January 05, 2011

Hello, and goodbye

A few years ago I experienced a brief moment of internet fame thanks to a ranting, passionate post I wrote about the fact that hot mustard sauce was no longer available for Chicken McNuggets at McDonald's.

It was just one of those weird, random quirks of fate which the Internet seems to love so much. For reasons unknown to me, someone decided to post a link to the blog entry at Fark.com, which prompted a sudden surge in traffic to the tune of about 20,000 people over the course of two days.

This was sort of exciting, even though I couldn't begin to explain exactly why that particular entry was so weirdly appealing.

I bring this up because I discovered yesterday that Hot Mustard sauce has made its triumphant return to McDonald's restaurants, and I couldn't possibly be happier to have learned that. It's been a little bit more than four years since I learned of the loss, and now the world is as it should be again.

And so that's why I'm ending this blog.

Well, no, I suppose that's not really all there is too it. To be perfectly honest, this blog has been pretty untouched for a very long time (barring the occasional pre-Academy Award post), and was only missing having someone come in and officially close the doors. But as I thought back on that original Hot Mustard post, and then further back on the blog in general, I discovered two things -- first, I felt a sudden surge of desire to start blogging again. And second, I realized that this blog had run its course.

This blog is an artifact from a particular time in my life. It's not a time in my life I'm ashamed of or embarrassed of, it's not something I feel a need to hide from anyone, so I certainly have no intention of taking this blog down. Just the same, it's a particular time in my life that has passed.

I always find it troubling when when an online presence just sort of stops without any word. It makes you wonder what happened. Did the blogger have a heart attack and keel over next to his computer? Did he decide he had better things to do with his time? Did he just forget his password? It felt, after writing here for so many years, that it would be a disservice to just let the site become a ghost town without any mention of what had happened.

And so that's why this is goodbye.

Goodbye, Caught In The Blog. You were good to me for quite a long time, but it's time to move on to the next thing. My life is no longer the life I led when I called this site home. It's time to find someplace new.

I'll be sure to let you know when I get there.

Cheers,
Todd