Let Me Put It To You This Way
“She spends more time with people she doesn’t even know than she does with those she knows,” my husband said to friends we were having dinner with when the subject ‘what have you been doing lately?’ and then blogging came up.
“Not more time,” I protested, and then added with a laugh “…about the same amount of time. It’s hard to explain,” I offered sheepishly, suddenly wanting the focus of attention to be off me.
The scenario presented a great opportunity to further the dialogue I’ve been having with myself and with others about blogging, but, unfortunately, I’m one of those people who doesn’t always think well on my feet. Instead, I tend to think of all the things I should have said later, which is probably why I write.
Most of my family and friends are beginning to understand that blogging can be a way expand myself as a writer and that it provides me a format to record my life and its setting for my descendents, not so unlike the writing of memoirs. But the interactive aspect of blogging is the part I think many understand least. Not too many years ago, I myself was suspicious of relationships formed via the internet.
Blogging friendships are formed in different ways and for many different reasons. Sometimes they develop because of locality. I like to read regional Virginian blogs, as well as those from the Boston, Massachusetts, near where I grew up. Because so much of my writing was kicked into gear by the loss of my brothers 4 years ago, my blog has a grief and loss thread to it. I frequently connect with other bloggers who have lost someone close and friendships sometimes ensue. As a writer, I’m also drawn to blogs by other writers and am fascinated by some of them. A fun and creative blogger whose personality comes through online, or one who writes about things that are new to me also gets my attention.
When my husband made the comment he did to our friends, I wish I had remembered to say: When I lost my father in late November, I got enormous support from other bloggers, those people I don’t even know. Many of them left meaningful and heartfelt comments, a couple even sent cards in the mail. I wish I had also remembered to mention the married couple that we all know who met online. Times have changed. Haven’t they?
Have you met in person any internet friends, blogging or otherwise?
January 21st, 2006 3:48 pm
I think you have to start blogging to understand it. It is is such a wonderful invention of this age. I have recently met a blogger whose blog I have been visiting for a while and I get to meet another next week…because we happened to find out we are visiting the same city at the same time. It is fun to get to really meet people we “know” virtually. And…it is a wonderful way of recording you life!
January 22nd, 2006 12:12 am
Mary and I met one other blogger and had a fabulous time, talking for hours on end. Up in Boston we were also part of a local group that itself was part of a much larger listserv. It’s been a wonderful experience!
January 22nd, 2006 8:48 am
Hello Colleen,
Your blog is showing!
LOL
January 22nd, 2006 9:05 am
Your first two paragraphs were about my life and how I feel about blogging. How did you know? I am not a writer such as you but I do have a love affair with words, always have a more cogent thought after the conversation is over, and have family who think I must have no life due to all my blogging and blog surfing. I think there is a bit of latent psychologist in my motivation as I like to see how differently people react to things. Also, I love how much we are the same around the globe and fascinated by our differences. (Nope, haven’t met any blogfriends…that is a little scary for me.)
January 22nd, 2006 9:45 am
How cute are you with your laptop! {{hugs}}
My husband used to be very wary of the people I met online. I trusted much more in the beginning – but that also means I’ve been hurt more. I’ve met people in person from chat rooms, I regularly speak to many of the bloggers I’ve mett on the phone and we’ve become quite close. In fact in June, I’ll be Maid of Honor for a friend of mine that I met online just over a year ago. She doesn’t live too far from me, and we had lunch last summer.
I don’t get out much, so I don’t know many “real” people. I love how that term is used – It always makes me laugh. You, for example, are very real to me and if I lived in the neighborhood most likely I would be coming over for tea and scrabble. Even virtually, you are my friend and I feel a bond with you just as much as I feel a bond with my neighbor.
xoxo
January 22nd, 2006 5:57 pm
Well, I met you through your blog, and I met my husband through an online personal ad. (He had posted an ad and I was so impressed with his good grammar and spelling that I responded to it!)
January 22nd, 2006 6:15 pm
I am so GLAD you are up and running!!!
January 22nd, 2006 9:08 pm
Well, I’m still “off-center” but at least the blog is working.
I agree with you Tabor. I definately have a “social scientist” aspect to my blogging.
I love hearing all the blogger meet-up stories…and having some of my own…like when Jeanne and I met at Floyd Fest last year.
January 22nd, 2006 9:23 pm
Hi Colleen..Michele sent me tonight!
No, I haven’t net anyone in person yet from being on-line…Blogging is the clsest I’ve ever come to a ‘chat room’…that, for some reason, just didn’t interest me…BUT, I feel as you do…I have met through blogging, so very many really lovely and interesting people…like you!! And I have come to value these blogging friendships very very much…I too find that my Non-Blogging friends don’t seem to get any of it..the ‘meeting of people’ less than the blogging, but some don’t even know what blogging is at all…and I understand that cause I dudn’t either until I started to blog…
I have had some phone conversatitions with one blogger and am enjoying these conversations very very much…I’m sure that I will eventually meet some people ‘in person’, as these friendships develop…
It’s truly a whole world out there that I find utterly fascinating. Great post, once again Colleen, cause it makes me think about things and evalute things and I like that, a lot!
January 22nd, 2006 9:25 pm
I have.. just one. it was quite exciting, becasue I was a fan of her writing and we have much in common. I think the blogosphere is pretty cool for stuff like that….
here from Michele’s!
January 22nd, 2006 9:34 pm
I just nodded constantly from start to finish. Yup, yup, and yup: you’re so right about expansion, and about how it digs deep into the writer’s soul.
I can’t explain my own blogging – to myself or to others. But as a writer, it feels right. It fuels so many other things that it’s difficult to imagine going back to a life without it.
Thanks for saying it like it is, Colleen. Wonderfully put, as usual.
January 22nd, 2006 9:44 pm
Just checking.
January 22nd, 2006 9:52 pm
Hi I was sent by Michelle. I met my husband online by chattingon IM’S. We are going on six years of marriage and have two beautiful girls together.I am forever grateful to the internet for giving me my hubby!
January 22nd, 2006 10:23 pm
I have met one blogger in person. There are more and more couples that I find found each other on the internet.
I’m beginning to think that the movie “Six Degrees of Separation” is not far from the truth. Take you and I for example: I spent almost 7 years in Roanoke as a child and it is my mother’s home town. I still have relatives in Franklin County. One of our church’s colleges is in Quincy, MA about two blocks from the bay. I almost went to that college. You are the first one I have met from Roanoke.
Someone out of the blue from Sao Paulo, Brazil left a comment in the last hour. My brother is to perform a concert in Sao Paulo in April. How unusual is this.
I truly appreciate the people I’ve met blogging. Having moved recently and taking care of elderly parents, I haven’t made any real “go out and see a movie or have dinner” friends. Blogging helps me feel as if I were still connected with the world outside the doctor’s appointments.
January 22nd, 2006 10:57 pm
At least with a laptop, you can be in the same room with your real life friends and family and your blog friends at the same time. My family is always accusing me of isolating myself in my study. But as you say, it is part of the job and the joy of being a writer. I can’t believe the number of amazing people I’ve met through blogging.
January 22nd, 2006 11:44 pm
I started blogging as a way to come out of isolation during and after an abusive relationship. Since that time (1998), my readers have been there through a lot of ups and downs, and some have become like family to me. A lot of my closest friends are people I only know in this world.
The comment your husband made was typical of someone who doesn’t blog, and therefore doesn’t understand the connection we writers have with one another through this venue. It is powerful, and it is just as ‘real’ as so-called ‘real life’.
I lost my sister to suicide. Knowing I’m not alone in that helps. A lot. How many people in so-called ‘real life’ would I meet who also survived a sibling suicide? I can’t search ‘tags’ in real life. I can’t focus my attention solely upon my interests, because there is no way to ‘search’ in real life that isn’t invasive.
This world saves me a lot of time, and brings me a lot of joy. 🙂
Feith
January 22nd, 2006 11:48 pm
No, Colleen, I have not actually met any of the bloggers I “know”, but I surely hope to do that soon. We have a wonderful fraternity/sorority, don’t we? It is nearly impossible to esxplain to my family. They think we are all nuts.
January 23rd, 2006 12:15 am
Yes, I’ve met internet friends. Two summers ago 7 of us got together for a meeting. It was so much fun to see if they matched my expectations (most did). I have since broken from the group (not a blogger group per se, but an internet group, which is essentially the same thing for we intimately shared on a daily basis). I truly grieved the break up even though it was my own decision to end it (long story). I still think of them fondly. An entry is here: http://ben-gal.tripod.com/index.blog?entry_id=1180342
Great entry Col and I’m glad your computer troubles are getting ironed out.
Kathy
January 23rd, 2006 1:06 am
Hi. I found you on Leanne’s Blog. I completely agree with you, I’m addicted to blogging. While I haven’t met anyone from it yet, I have met people offline that I chatted with online. The internet can connect people who would never in “real” life made a connection. Also, I reveal more things on my blog than I do in real life. So, the blogging world completely gets it!!
January 23rd, 2006 2:43 am
As someone who is challenged by depression, blogging as been a way for me to find an amusing take on things that would otherwise smash me to the bottom of the barrel. A change of perspective can help me deal. Plus, the support of my readers, knowing that they care, has at times been what moves me through the motions of getting through life. It has also been a way for me to time capsule meaningful moments.
Oh, and I met one of my best friends through blogging.
(Found you by Leanne’s blog…)
January 23rd, 2006 8:56 am
Oh, do I understand this post! There is still a lot misunderstood about blogging. It is an escape for me, an outlet…even if I don’t always post the most imaginative or happiest of stuff. It’s a good way to vent, and it helps me keep in touch with my family, most of whom live far away.
January 23rd, 2006 10:39 am
I belong to an email group that has been together for, jeez, 10 years or so.. I have met some of them. It has been a source of great support for me.
January 23rd, 2006 12:07 pm
This is my take on it… To me, the Internet is no different than walking down Main Street. When I walk down Main Street I stop into the shops that interest me, surrounded for the most part by people that I don’t know. I just nod my head and maybe say hello to these folks, sometimes I might not even make eye contact, but if I see someone that has something in common with me, I am much more inclined to strike up a conversation. Maybe I’m in a bookstore and see someone holding a novel by my favorite author, I might say “Isn’t she great? Have you read such and such yet?” If I’m far away from home and overhear someone say they are from where I live, I would probably say “Hey, you are from such and such? No kidding, I am from just down the road in …” Or conversely, if I’m in my hometown and overhear someone say they are from Timbuktu, then I will probably say “Wow, really, you’re from Timbuktu? What brings you to our little town? Do you like it so far? What’s it like where you’re from?” Or maybe I find a shop that I really like and after going there over and over I get to know the people that I see there everyday.
I’ve had my kayak on the roof of my car and strangers have rolled their windows down to yell hello and ask me about where I’m on my way to or from when my boat is on the roof. I’ve done the same thing when I saw a really funny anti-Bush bumper sticker on a car.
People are drawn to others for a host of reasons. It’s how we make friends. I think this happens in the exact same way on the Internet and it’s no more strange to discover something in common with a person online and to strike up a conversation with them than it is to come home from shopping on Main Street and say “I met the neatest person today. She was from Texas, her name is Judy and is in town visiting family that lives up on Rockford Street across from that big yellow house that we like so much. I was in The Good Life getting a coffee when we started talking because her little boy wears glasses too and he was just the cutest thing, her boy got his when he was just one too and she wanted to know…yada yada… Well it turns out that her first husband left her ten years ago while they were living in…yada yada and then her brother had the exact same thing happen to him that happened to your aunt and… yada yada… and I got her email address so that I can send her the recipe to this cake we had both heard about on Paula Deen and …. yada yada yada”
January 23rd, 2006 2:39 pm
Yes, I have met some in real live, some over the phone, and some in e-mail and chat volleys.
Everyone is real. Everyone has been so nice!
January 23rd, 2006 6:43 pm
I’ve met a few from chatting and much more recently from blogging; just like in any other situation, I clicked with a few, some of whom are still close friends and didn’t click with others…
I’ve also become friends with some bloggers I’ve never met!
January 23rd, 2006 8:57 pm
it is a very hard thing to explain!.. I have found some of my closet friends from being online. Its going on 7 years now that I’ve “known” them but have never met them in real life.
January 24th, 2006 5:34 am
I agree about the “you have to start blogging” to understand it. We live in a great era, where we can get to know people who live lives that we won’t. I can know, through others’ experiences, what it is like to be an artist, or a stay-at-home Mom, or an office worker. or whatever. My blog was meant to give me an outlet for something I enjoy doing (writing), a way to keep my family and friends informed, and I believe it is a great hobby to have.
January 24th, 2006 7:51 pm
I have never met in person any of my blogging friends…but the connection I feel towards them can not be denied. I must admit that this is even a little surprising to myself.
October 31st, 2006 8:38 am
colleen- i might have to put a link to this entry sometime on my blog. i’m sure i’ll get questions about blogging, and i love your explanation in this post. i love the picture, too- you look like meryl streep from the side! 🙂 also very regal and very much like a writer!!
October 31st, 2006 8:48 am
I’ve been told I look like Meryl Streep many times. I just read an essay for WVTF on blogging…trying to explain it to the masses who don’t know. Wonder when they will air it. When they do I’ll post it here.