It's strange, but I think we may be running out of internet. It might just be me — but I don't think so. Catherine's been complaining of the same thing. I now frequently find my RSS reader empty, forlorn. Oh sure, Wonkette can be reliably counted on to fill up a feed with entries I've already read, since its authors are now pathologically incapable of leaving a post unrevised. And sites like TUAW and Gizmodo reliably spam me with totally uninteresting posts, thanks to the Dentons and Dobkins of the world deciding that they earn their pay with quantity rather than quality. But post volume seems to be down on the good blogs — by which I mean my friends' sites.

Certainly, I'm guilty as well. Although the site's traffic has mostly levelled off, I feel a lot more pressure to tone down the bloggy self-indulgence here than I used to. I know that people who are professionally, personally or just plain old important to me stop by here with some regularity, and that makes me think twice before rattling off a thousand-word screed about how such-and-such or so-and-so ought to be publicly euthanized for society's benefit.

There are other reasons, too. In the last year or two, many of my friends' online lives have taken on a more professional character. By and large, this is fantastic — I'm incredibly glad that Kriston is getting paid to blog, that Catherine is writing papers on RSS, and that I can claim "blog reading" on my timesheet. But it does sort of change the way the whole thing feels. The days of pretending to work in a Crystal City cubicle, furiously penning Wonkette-bait are over.

It's pretty stupid, in retrospect — approaching the internet like a private clubhouse for you and your buddies. But I'm still sort of sad to feel the thing become complicated. I don't think there's a solution, short of fleeing to MySpace. And I'm not prepared to debase myself like that.

For what it's worth, I'll do my best to be a little less self-conscious about writing here. There's no reason we can't reclaim the heights of lowly self-involvement we once reached.

POSTSCRIPT: Aaand before even hitting publish, I've already violated my new resolution. There's an entertainingly passive-aggressive anonymous note plastered all over the men's room. I doubt it's from a coworker — but this is a shared office space, so there's no telling. So: no putting it on the internet. Drat. But just between you and me, anonymous bathroom-note-author, I'm not the one who's been peeing on the seats.