As many of you probably already know, I use a service called FeedBlitz to send out notifications whenever I do a new post. Some of you have already signed up (using the handy sign-up form in the sidebar), but I know that the majority of you already have your own favorite feed reader, like Bloglines, for example, to do that for you.

Anyway, FeedBlitz apparently asks users to enter a reason if they decide to unsubscribe from your blog’s notifications. I received notice the other day that one of my readers had unsubscribed and the reason listed — apparently chosen from a list of options — was “Content no longer relevant.”

No longer?

This is a blog, for heaven’s sake! What about a blog is ever relevant? I’d like to think that about half of the time, I find something somewhat entertaining, but I wouldn’t dare guarantee even that. I certainly wouldn’t suggest that my ramblings are “relevant” to anything other than my own amusement.

I know that one other reader has stopped reading since I merged all of my blogs — all five of them — into this single one. I know this because said reader left a comment to tell me so. Sure, I’ll admit it: I hate to lose a reader. But I’ll also be the first to say that I learned a long time ago that it is impossible to please everyone.

As much as some people preferred having separate blogs for my posts on writing, religion, photography, memes and “everything else,” it just wasn’t working for me. It’s quite a challenge to regularly update five blogs. Sometimes, when things are really busy, regularly updating two is a challenge. And I didn’t like the idea that some blogs were going stale.

I think it’s better to have one blog that is updated a few times per week, with categories that allow someone to focus on specific themes they’re interested in, than to find I have nothing to say about a particular subject for a month, only to have readers drop me from their blogroll because I “don’t update often enough.”

Whether they stop reading because of the merge or because individual blogs aren’t updated the way they want them updated, it comes to the same thing, doesn’t it?

Granted, there are a number of possibilities here: this reader who decided to unsubscribe may have decided to use a different service and may be reading me from that. Or, the person may have not found a better option to explain the decision to unsubscribe in the list; I don’t know what those options are.

It’s also possible that they just wanted to stop getting emails. I know my inbox can fill up rather quickly if I don’t regularly stay on top of it.

But still, I’m amused to know that I’m no longer relevant. Maybe this is the prelude to being put out to pasture? Where does one go in the blogosphere to feed the cyber-pigeons?