Hello, and Goodbye (For Now)

This is a very strange post to write.  For the first time in over ten years, I'm taking a break from blogging to work on another project.This is, frankly, terrifying.  I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that blogging has been the biggest influence over my life in the last ten years.  Most of my current friends are people I met through blogging--most of them bloggers themselves.  I got my job at the Economist (and by extension, my current job) because of the blog.  When I met my husband for the first time, we both already knew each other . . . through our blogging.  It's also provided an enormous amount of personal satisfaction, obviously, and a connection to a community of readers and commenters who feel like old friends I just never happened to meet.For the last four years, the blog has completely structured my days.  I wake up, amble to my office, and prowl the RSS feed for blogfodder.  Frequently, the last thing I do before I go to sleep is read my comments.  What does my life look like without the blog?  I'm about to find out.So farewell, for now.  I'll be back in a few months, and meanwhile, I leave you with crack teams of guest bloggers to fill the gap.  Here's the first roster, who will be blogging here for the next two weeks:Avik Roy, who writes The Apothecary blog at Forbes. He is a Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research and writes on health care, entitlement reform, finance, and other policy issues for Forbes, National Review, National Affairs, and other publications. He runs an independent health care research firm in New York City. Prior to his current position, he worked as an analyst and portfolio manager at J.P. Morgan, Bain Capital, and other firms.  As far as I know, he is our only guest-blogger who has testified before congress. Katherine Mangu-Ward, the managing editor of Reason Magazine and Reason.com. Mangu-Ward has also worked as a reporter for The Weekly Standard magazine and as a researcher at The New York Times op-ed page, and her work has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times online and numerous other publications.  When invited over to dinner, Katherine will bring--if asked nicely--the most delicious goat-cheese stuffed dates you have ever eaten.Derek Lowe, a pharma researcher and long-time blogger who has taught me most of what I know about the drug discovery process.  He's got a PhD in organic chemistry from Duke, and has decades of experience working in drug discovery for both Big Pharma and biotech.  He's also got the patience of a saint, as witnessed by the amount of time he has spent walking me through finicky drug-discovery questions.  He may be the longest-contiunous science blogger . . . and he's definitely one of my favorites.Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry is a senior research analyst for Business Insider Intelligence. He is also a business and economics columnist at Atlantico, a lecturer at HEC Paris business school and a mentor at startup accelerator programs SeedCamp and Le Camping. Prior to BI Intelligence he was a reporter at SAI, Business Insider's internet page. Gobry was a longtime co-blogger of my husband's at The American Scene, where he still blogs (not often enough).  He is the only person I know who tweets in both French and English.And with that, I'll say so long, farewell, auf wiedersehen, goodbye.  Be nice to the guest bloggers.  I'll miss you all.