Da Answah

Wow, some of you folks were up really early or really late last night!

I blog for both myself and my readers. I started for myself, of course, but it became a process of reading other blogs, being read, and starting to communicate with other people. And I think Heith summed it up nicely: If I didn't care about my readers, I might as well just write in a notebook with a pen.

Actually, I do carry around a notebook and some pens. Everywhere. But I don't have nearly the devotion to them that I do to my blog. And that is not just because of my readers-- I have always journaled-- it is more because I type faster than I can write these days!!!

But for things that are not fodder for the blog, I either write them down in the notebook, or more likely, don't write them down at all.

But one of the things that has been so lovely about blogging (and I just passed my first anniversary of blogging, don't know exactly when, but within the past week or so) has definitely been YOU guys. There are blogs that I read every day, people that I email, people who read me every day (and so, if I know I won't have time to update, I try to say so :) ) people who send me books, scarves and spices, and people whose thin mints I have been driving around with for a week and haven't had a spare minute to get to the post office. There are people who need someone to buy things for their kids' fundraiser, or donate money for cancer research.

Over the past year, my readers have become important to me-- not as an audience for my blog, but as my friends. It started out as my friends whom I know in real life, and was a fun way to check in and to have more insight into them.

But since then, all of you have become my friends.

The blog as a medium has become the avenue, the communal spot, through which we all check in and check up on each other. When the internet first started, I realized immediately that suddenly our communities don't depend on where we live anymore. We can choose from across the nation and around the world whom we like, and with whom we want to share our lives.

Isn't that amazing?

So, what started as a way to get me to write every day has now become something different altogether, although I do still like the fact that I am writing every day. And my parents and Dereck's parents can check in daily. And my kids will have a record (I need to back up to discs!) of my life that is much more legible than all those notebooks.

I would say that before I started blogging, I had more literary ambitions: I wanted to be a published writer, fiction or poetry or nonfiction, I wanted to be famous because I wanted to be read. But I have to admit, blogging pretty much satisfies everything I wanted to gain from that ambition.

Okay, now I have to get ready for another full day at work!

But that's my answer. Thank you for reading, and thank you for playing along!