100th Blog

We interrupt our regularly schedule broadcast (1975 – Volume IV) to bring you this special centennial blog post:

Recently, my blog was flooded by hits from a total stranger on a post I had written well over a year ago (look up salsa lessons and you can read for yourself). The stranger accused me of being an Ugly American-type insensitive to other cultures. At first, this completely pissed me off and I sicked a few of my friends on her to defend my honor. I meant to rise above her petty accusations and stay out of the whole matter, but finally, I couldn’t resist and ended up responding in a note of sarcastic brilliance if I do say so myself.

But in the week or so I got my panties in a wad about this stranger’s opinion of me, I had forgotten some simple advice I often give to children who complain they have been called a name or been made fun of – “is it true?,” if the answer is no, than let them say what they want because you know they are wrong. This was certainly the case, what she said about me wasn’t true, yet I couldn’t let it rest until (if you read it you will see) the woman finally recounted that she in fact had jumped to the wrong conclusion. Finally, my “Joseph” moment!
Indeed, good came from what was meant to be harmful to me; I began to revisit why I began blogging in the first place which seems fitting to share in this my 100th post (who knew, right?).
I started blogging because I love to write. I might not be on the path to win the Pulitzer or even get published, but this simple little blog allows me some formality to hone my craft. Admittedly, there are typos, ill-constructed sentences, over reliance on parenthetical phrases and a whole host of other things that an editor would scoff at it, but I like to think, every once in while there might just be a good little nugget in there. A friend once told me a story about an amazing painter whose art was never discovered until she died – she had painted a lifetime of beautiful paintings for the sheer joy of painting. For the few stolen moments a week I find to work on my blog, I am a writer writing for the sheer joy of writing.

Community. In my first foray into blogging (some of you might remember) I discovered there is a community of bloggers out there who had I not put some of my thoughts out there, I might not have ever met. For the most part, with a few exceptions, I have never met this fellowship of bloggers, but many of them, I have come to consider as friends. On the flipside, there are real friends who I don’t get to see as much as I would like because of distance, busyness or my diet, but keeping up on their blogs makes me feel in touch with them.

Therapeutic. Writing about the hijinks and capers of my life has helped me make sense of them. And if you can believe it, I have a whole host of unfinished blogs out there – often trudging through the mediocre controversies/scandals that I probably opted not to “publish” for fear of getting fired from – but those are the blogs that have brought me much needed clarity. Maybe, someday, I will publish them…Along the same lines, I have written here and there about my passion for local at-risk children a topic that I ought to visit more.

There it is, in a brief and poorly constructed nutshell, as much of the why I can muster together before I must go clean out my garage, about my blogging motivation. Granted, I can use some polish, branding and some pointers on how to better use the edit functions of blogger, but in the end that isn’t really my point (now). I also probably won’t ever have more than a handful of followers (I love all nine of you) but that also isn’t really my point. Nor will I get discovered by the New York Times as I am quite sure they very often troll blogs as a means of finding new columnists. Oh well, I would settle for an appearance on the Daily Show or maybe even tickets.

Fight On and beat the Cougars!