Good-bye to Gaia

I'm always sad when things I like go away, and they go away too often. It seems like the television shows that I really enjoy never make it through the first season. The stores where I like to shop are always empty and frequently close shortly after I discover them. When I find a really nice style of clothes, or a brand of food my family finds particularly tasty, it is always discontinued. I suffer with scratched sunglasses because they don't make that style anymore. Forget about shoes.

I never think about the internet being like those real life things, though. Once it's on the internet, it's there forever, right? I mean, I haven't been on Geocities for ten years, but I hear it's still there. Every now and then a Google hit is hosted by Angelfire. Once in cyberspace, always in cyberspace, or so I thought.

Today I got an email from the Gaia Community. Before it was Gaia, it was Zaadz. Zaadz was cool. I found the site when they were advertising in Yoga Journal. It was all about people coming together, building community and learning from each other. I couldn't resist the print ads and had to check it out.

Zaadz had a blog, and once I was signed up I started blogging away. I found the site right before I started yoga teacher training, so I blogged about that. I took an online writing course and blogged about that. I blogged about graduations, a puppy and moving. When Gaiam bought the site and it became Gaia, I kept on blogging.

About a year ago, I decided that my blog needed a wider audience. I mean, why have two people reading my blog when I could have, say, twenty? So I set myself up on Blogger and rarely posted at Gaia anymore. I guess I wasn't the only one.

While I wasn't using it all the time, I liked that it was there. But, like the empty stores, Gaia is going away. That email that I got said they would be shutting the site down at the end of the month. While I don't need it, I will miss having the tab with my Gaia page open when I start my browser. It's been there for three years, longer than I've had this laptop.

Good-bye to Gaia, and good-bye to the shadow of Zaadz that still lingers there. Good-bye to my Gaia cyber-friends. Thank you for reading my words. Both of you.