bunglerd makes an interesting point about how Anne Jamieson might read.

you read different things for different parts of yourself.

From here, I have no idea if the formerly single mom's writing actually changed. Maybe Ms Jamieson changed. It seems obvious that when our lives change, our writing changes, our friendships change, our needs to create or not create change.

At one point I had many friends whose company I enjoyed. Then I had one friend whose company I enjoyed more and I spent less and less time with my other friends. Maybe writing is like that. Maybe the newly married writer no longer cares about her column and is writing something else. Maybe this, maybe that. It doesn't matter.

Finding Attention

I like what b_b said below. The word "attention" puts a somewhat negative spin on the process of enjoying recognition and feedback. Writing might be about finding attention or spilling inner thoughts. Those are not bad things, but that is not why I write. In some cases, as kleinbl00 says "it's a job." Writing -- the wonderful amazing process of being able to write, to develop ideas, to express thoughts, to clarify, to delineate, to communicate in symbols across a page or a screen or a tablet or a wall -- is (as you well know, refugee) many other things as well.

As for attention-seeking: I know for sure when I started my blog in July 2011 that it was not attention-seeking because I did not send it out to my 200 closest friends or to anyone. It wasn't about spilling inner thoughts either. It was about putting into record stories, ideas, and questions that I had been thinking about and discussing for a long time.

I started, though, to distract myself from some difficult problems (which have never been mentioned in my blog). In the process of distracting myself, I also learned a great deal about writing and blogging and have a great deal more to learn. In fact, the more one writes, the more one learns - so whether one writes to connect with others, to understand one's self, to do a job, or any other reason . . . the more you write, the more you learn and that's a good reason, in my opinion, to keep writing.