Lessons from blogging

It has now been just 6 months since I started this blog. In January, I had decided that I wanted to do more writing. I thought that a blog would be a good place to sort out my thoughts and memorialize events in my life. In my mind it would be a diary of sorts, online but anonymous.  I would tell no one about it, as then I would not need to monitor my entries.

Over this time, I have learned a few things about and from blogging.

One of the biggest surprises was to realize how much I have come to rely on it. I enjoy posting things on this site, and often say to myself “This is something I should blog about.” I don’t have a very exciting life, so sometimes it has been hard to come up with a subject. Many of the posts are rambling and boring. But so far, I have found enough for a few hundred posts.

I am also surprised to realize how much I enjoy meeting the other bloggers. I have read hundreds of entries on dozens of blogs. I enjoy almost all of them. I have commented on many blogs, and have established a “blog friendship” with several people, exchanging comments regularly. I truly feel as though I have gained several good friends over the past six months-even though I have never met these individuals, and likely never will. I truly feel my life has been enriched by these friendships.

Another thing that I have realized is that it is very difficult to maintain my anonymity. I have never really indicated where I live, but in discussing Michele Bachmann, it does point to a certain region. I have never specifically indicated my job, but many people have a fairly good idea of what I do for a living. I have hesitated to post photos, and only recently did so. I do not want my husband, children or grandchildren to be identifiable on the internet, or to have too much information about them (such as their names) included in my posts. That is hard to maintain when discussing things about them. I am a fanatic about privacy, and the internet scares the hell out of me.

It amazes me that there are so many people out there who are blogging, especially seniors. So much of our society ridicules seniors for not keeping up with technology. But there are an awful lot of seniors who are maintaining very sophisticated blogs and who definitely know  their way around the internet! I am still learning, and I know I have a lot to learn.

I think that there may be some family members who have figured out that I am keeping this blog. It doesn’t affect what I write, for the most part. I do worry sometimes that I could have offended someone and that they wouldn’t want to talk about it because they couldn’t admit that they know about the blog. I hope that hasn’t happened, but as another blog friend stated, “your family could be lurkers”.

Another very surprising part of blogging is the statistics. I never realized that blogs could be so thoroughly analyzed, or that I would become so fanatical about it. I love to see how many people have visited the blog. I feel bad if it seems that people weren’t drawn to the postings and the little graph starts to point downward. It amazes me to see how many people actually do read what I write. I am even more amazed to see that bloggers respond to my comments on their site.  I love it! 

In any event, I am very happy that I entered the blogging world. I would love to improve this blog (the layout still bothers me and I need to learn a lot more about the technological parts, but how do I ask questions of my technology gurus-my children-if I really don’t want them to know about the blog?) I enjoy the writing, even those subjects that may be boring. I am paying much more attention to my life.

I hope to continue with this for a long time-I hope you will stick with me even when it gets boring or depressing.

Thanks for visiting!

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