Some True Facts and Confessions About Blogging

Today I managed to spend the entire day blogging, with exceptions for hauling the son around and feeding the cats.   By “blogging” I mean visiting lots of other bloggers online, trying to get my photos to cooperate, and writing in my blog.

All my writing life I have felt guilty and self-indulgent when I spent time writing for pleasure.   Sure, I got paid for it in various venues, and wrote lots as a student, and even sneaked in some time writing short stories or novels that I never finished.  I still have four novels floating around aimlessly, with characters and everything.  That kind of writing has always been, to me, more of a treat…a sort of stolen pleasure, so to speak.

Not so much that the Writer’s Life is considered glamorous and exciting and adventurous.   When I was a girl I had aspirations to be, in no particular order: an Exotic Dancer, a Singer, a Nurse, Psychiatrist, Police Woman, and I should have added– Foreign Correspondent to that list.  The main reason I never got far with any of my ambitions was a deep-set idea that “people like us never went to college,”  Also, I trip over my own feet and even though I took dancing lessons once (torturing the poor instructor,) and gave up that idea.  Furthermore, I was always too fat, as well as being uncoordinated, to qualify as an exotic dancer…I would have tripped over my feathers.    A singer?  Well I admit that except for a very brief glimmer of hope at being the Star of the Christmas Pageant, the only audience my singing has ever attracted consists of Cats.

Being a nurse was sort of ruled out because of my aversion to blood.  In an emergency I stand around saying “oh my God!” and feeling sick.   Three of my daughters are nurses, but not me.   Psychiatrist was ruled out because of rule one about people like me not going to college, AND my zero-capacity for Math, and illiteracy in Science (proven by a C I got in Geology once…they tricked me on the rocks, so I didn’t do well on the final exam.)     The possibility of Police work never really came up.

I might have been a News Correspondent, in fact I was, on a medium-size newspaper covering the wilds of city council and school board meetings.   Those affairs can get pretty wild sometimes, I’ll admit.   My ideal, my role-model,  I might say, when it comes to Foreign Correspondents would be Christine Anapour, CNN’s all-over-the-world War Correspondent.   She always looks so darn cool in her flack jacket!

OK, I seem to have really gotten off-topic here!

My point?   Oh yes.   The reasons I love blogging are many-fold,    But most of all I appreciate and enjoy the opportunity to write about all of the things I have wanted to my whole life.   I enjoy having other bloggers and writers “follow” me, and am very thankful to have had interesting and write-worthy things happen in my life.   I follow the works of many other bloggers because their experiences and wants and rants are similar to my own, or offer nice change of pace distractions.   I love all of the blogs–even the ones that don’t have A Cat featured prominently on the first page.

I especially enjoy the classes WordPress offers frequently, the topics and prompts, wide-open field for subjects and for photography–and especially the other bloggers that I meet.   This may sound self-serving, and I suppose it is in a way…but I think that I offer as much to the others in my classes and in the Blogger Community, and the thing here is the interaction. (I know I already said that, but its SO hard to choose from among clauses and paragraphs. )

Every class I have taken has had a different, unique character.  Some are new bloggers just getting their feet wet, others are seasoned photographers (doesn’t that sound swash-buckling!) and writers who have their own reasons for doing what they do.  I can’t speak for anyone else, but I think it has to do with the sense and atmosphere of Community.  Mutual support is of course a major ingredient, and for me its the Armchair Travel of visiting exotic places now that I am no longer able to do the things I used to do.

So anyway…those are some true facts and confessions about Blogging.  🙂