Each Day Already is a Challenge

Silently They Leave

A few days ago, I was wondering what happened to someone who I had "met" here about a year ago. I was one of the first to welcome this newbie when he arrived. He read and reviewed a bunch of my port, and I read the few items he posted. Every once in a while, one of us would contact the other just to check in.

About a month ago, I started trying to find this writer, but the problem was that I completely forgot his handle or user name. Finally, I decided to sit down and go through some of my old correspondence to see if I could figure out how to find him.

Today, I finally found a few emails we had exchanged back and forth. But I also discovered that his WDC email address is no longer a working one and there are no writings posted by this writer.

I feel badly that I didn't keep in closer contact with this writer. I wonder if all is well. I wonder if he felt that he was spending too much time here and just had to leave. I'm pretty sure that the membership costs were not a problem for him.

And as I sat here thinking about my five years at WDC, I realized that so many with whom I shared brief Internet friendships have come and gone, often without even glancing back or waving good-bye.

Perhaps that's one thing that I have against these computer generated friendships. They're easily established. But they're also easily severed.

At least if your next door neighbor is moving, someone in the neighborhood will probably see the moving van or U-Haul truck being packed. Unless it's the middle of the night and they don't disturb the dogs.

But here in cyberspace, people often just silently slip away.