After you have been blogging for while you find that you have built a village of like minded people who read your blog, comment, and interact with you as you do with on theirs.
They are readers who share parts of their lives, just as you share parts of yours while enriching, and adding diversity to your life.
Bringing up blogs on your device is like diving into a good book, answering a phone call from a old friend, or getting a email from someone you haven’t heard from in a while. It’s catching up, it’s keeping track, it’s finding out.
It’s comfort food on a cold night, crunchy salads on a hot day, that first sip of your favourite beverage, it’s also about knowing that you have good friends who have your back.
Blogging is laughter, tears, joy, and sharing some sadness along the way.
It’s opening up, and closing in, building a tight circle, but at the same time stepping back and opening up your arms wide to welcome new readers.
Learning about new people, cherishing old friends, finding inspiration, and sometimes being uninspired for short periods of time until something strikes you as a good topic for a blog post.
It’s about blog breaks, and the dreaded “blogitis,” posting everyday, posting once a whenever, and that sometimes not knowing what to say turns out the best posts.
It’s about sitting at the computer tears running down your face, heart breaking for someone you have never met in person, and most likely never will.
And it’s about the times too numerous to count that laughter that has echoed through the house when those same people make you laugh out loud, and family asks what’s so funny?
It’s the blogging world, it’s complicated, simple, fun, and sometimes feels like work, until the scale tips back to a more balanced level. The balance is a personal one, each of us will find ours.
So this day, now six years after I published my first blog post, my friends raise your glass for all of us.
By this time over 1128 posts, 23144 comments left on my blog, countless blogging comments made on others, it’s just… stats… that’s all they are, numbers.
The real numbers that count are the friendships, the relationships that I am part of, the knowledge that there are people out there who understand and appreciate me, and that I understand and appreciate them.
It’s being a part of something so big it’s changed history, one typed word at a time.
Raise your glass to the new bloggers, shiny and bright, keep it up, don’t despair, you are doing a great job and are on a journey of discovery, it’s going to be one heck of a ride so don’t give it up just yet.
Celebrate the long time bloggers who have helped clear the paths to our villages, pitched in to build our huts, and helped out as we decorate them. They are the friends who cry over our disappointments, and cheer us on when life is good.
Blogs lost, started, found, revamped, renamed, posts good, mediocre, and heartfelt. It’s about building a community, one word at a time, one comment at a time.
It’s about not knowing that naked is the new normal, until everyone starts to say hey… yes that’s me. And you realize that it’s not about clothing optional, but choosing to blog about what you find interesting.
It’s blog posts written late at night, and those that wake you up before dawn, demanding to be written down, before they are forgotten.
It’s putting in the years, marking the “blogaversaries” and realizing just how important it is to raise your glass and celebrate, acknowledge the effort and emotions that we put into our blogs.
Change, diversify, grow, and learn as you go along, be sure to make new friends, and cherish the old.
Because we are bloggers, and this is what we do.