Andrew Sullivan, who recently announced his retirement from blogging, spoke out Sunday about the reasons he quit his prolific writing career.
One revelation from Sullivan concerned the timing of his retirement: “I couldn’t imagine blogging the next election,” he said. “I will not spend another minute of my time writing about the Clintons. Period. Or the Bushes.”
He also talked about practical health reasons behind his decision to quit blogging, saying the nonstop pace of it started to take a mortal toll.
“The truth is, I had to stop primarily because it was killing me,” he admitted. “I used to joke that if blogging does kill someone, I would be the first to find out.”
Sullivan pointed to the “40 posts a day, every 20 minutes, seven days a week” he wrote and its effect on the rest of his life.
“Here’s what I would say: I spent a decade of my life, spending around seven hours a day in intimate conversation with around 70,000 to 100,000 people every day,” he said. “And inevitably, for those seven hours or more, I was not spending time with any actual human being, with a face and a body and a mind and a soul.”
Sullivan, one of the most prolific bloggers in America, announced his retirement in January. “I am saturated in digital life and I want to return to the actual world again,” he said then.
Soon after, he announced the shuttering of his website, “The Dish.”
Watch Sullivan below.