In an endearingly longwinded post addressed to his readers, professional blogger Andrew Sullivan announced that he has “decided to stop blogging in the near future” because he is “saturated in digital life” and wants “to write long essays that can answer more deeply and subtly the many questions that the Dish years have presented to me.” He also wants “stay healthy” and spend more time with his family.

To mark his semi-retirement, Sullivan is suspending The Dish’s paywall and terminating existing subscriptions. The fate of the blog’s full-time staff—which includes three head editors and a managing editor—remains unclear. (We’ve reached out to Sullivan and will update if we hear back.)

The latest and likely final incarnation of Sullivan’s daily blog will be remembered, in any case, for its protagonist’s brief, melodramatic sojourn to the uncivilized borderlands of New York City, where Sullivan experienced the indignity of having the wrong couch delivered to his Chelsea apartment before he gave up and returned to Washington, D.C.

Will we ever witness the return of Sullivan’s blog in its current form? It seems unlikely:

When I write again, it will be for you, I hope—just in a different form. I need to decompress and get healthy for a while; but I won’t disappear as a writer. But this much I know: nothing will ever be like this again, which is why it has been so precious; and why it will always be a part of me, wherever I go; and why it is so hard to finish this sentence and publish this post.

Don’t get too sentimental there, Sully. Though we’ve occasionally taken issue with your thoughts about things, our screens will grow dimmer without them.

Art by Jim Cooke