(Updated April 2023.) A farewell to author-blogger-self-experimenter extraordinaire Seth Roberts, who died in April 2014 at 61. Seth’s review of my blog in December 2011 increased my traffic by about 19,000 percent.
I began to think that maybe this blogging thing was actually worthwhile.
At the time he published his review, he hadn’t realized I’d referred to him as “the fella after my own heart” in this post about self-experimenters. One of his readers pointed it out to him. Another of his readers, and a fellow self-experimenting blogger, ambled over here to comment and became a good online friend.
Because I was a blogging newbie, and because Seth’s review appeared on New Year’s Eve, and because the majority of the traffic went to my post on how I ended my depression, I assumed the rise in traffic was due to woeful holiday non-revelers gone a-googling. Finally, eight months later, I started rooting around in WordPress’ stats and discovered the truth.
Several months into one of my long breaks from posting, Seth emailed and asked if I’d like to contribute to his blog. I couldn’t manage it at the time, but his reaching out made my day.
He came across as patient, thorough, fair-minded, and as interested in his readers’ n=1 investigations as in major scientific studies. I was very sad to hear he was gone.
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This content was first published in February 2015 and was updated in April 2023.
Image: Remix by MRhea. Photo stolen from the interwebs.
Marjorie R.
Marjorie is the creator of AvoidingRx.com, a record of her and her guest authors’ experiences with non-prescription health solutions. She is a third-generation nutritional-therapy self-experimenter.
