The Odd World of Blogging

Blogging is kind of weird. For me--and many like me--it's both writing exercise and semi-journal. I began this one just before the end of 2009, I think in large part to make me write, somewhere, something. Two years later, I bid you all a fond farewell, having decided it was keeping me from Serious Writing, giving me a false sense of written accomplishment, and announced the end of Confessions of a Would-Be Mountain Womon. That lasted a whole whopping month. I wasn't writing any more elsewhere, and I missed the act of electronic journaling, of sharing my thoughts, fears, joys with others. And I especially missed the comments, the interactions with you.

I also love reading your blogs. We share some assorted similiarities, and some big differences. Not one of us has the same life as the other, although one or the other travels the same spiritual path, or is a would-be homesteader as well (or provides an example to emulate), or knows what it is to feel less one's self without wool in some form nearby, or feels more complete when writing. We may not know each other, but perhaps we've both watched our children grow up and leave. Maybe we've both begun new lives unrecognizeable from what they were before. I like to think we bond with certain bloggers on some level, perhaps not all, but certain ones whose journeys resonate with something in us, whose written postcards awaken memories or inspiration.

But even as we bridge the distance between us with words and thought, the realities of physical distance and relative anonymity are a gulf we sometimes never manage to leap. Awhile back, the blog My Farmhouse Kitchen abruptly fell silent. One day there were posts, and then....not. It was months later that another blogger posted the heartbreaking news that the My Farmhouse Kitchen's writer had fought valiantly but lost a battle with cancer. Her blog, and more so the glimpses of her spirit in that blog, are missed.

The blogosphere seems a delicate web to me, made with silken threads that can withstand the darkest night's rain and glisten in the rising sun, but can be torn to shreds with a wave of the hand.

And so, perhaps we make friends with some fellow bloggers as our souls recognize kindred spirits, reaching out past the pages of cyberspace. And for the rest, well...we celebrate their presence, honor their hearts spilled out on our computer screens, and mourn when they disappear, grateful for the time together.