A Neophyte Blogger Wonders What it's All About

A month ago a relative told me I oughta write a blog. She said it's fun and easy as pie, and she was 1000% right. At the time I had no idea what a blog was, and I still don't know, but I've been writing one for a month. Fueled on by her simple encouragement "Write whatever you're thinking about" I've written fast and furiously this month, for a handful of readers consisting mainly of relatives and old classmates. It's been a fantastic obsession so far.

All aglow, like a blushing bride, I rush downstairs way too early in the mornings to hunt-and-peck as if gathering gems. At night I sit at the computer happy as can be, eat some butterscotch candy, listen to Jeopardy and Keith Olbermann on the TV in the other room and type up a storm. A click of the mouse is so easy...just dispatch everything out onto the airwaves or whatever that thing is that Mr. Gore invented....send it out into the world with no expectations and not much to lose......but what is it?...How does it work? Am I putting myself out there for no reason? Will I be vandalized, plagiarized, aggrandized, jeopardized? Am I taking any chances by babbling to the air?

Once when I first got a computer in the nineties, I decided to figure out what chat rooms were but I didn't really want to chat with anyone, I had heard it was dangerous, people could steal your soul away. On a lark I did a search for SILENT CHAT ROOMS and actually found one....in Iceland. It was my one and only chat room experience because I got scared out of my wits one night. I was just posting random tidbits of poetry and noone was ever in there...I figured they spoke another language....it was completely empty...I loved it. One night I was babbling about the state of something-or-other, Everest expeditions and George Mallory's camera I think, and all of a sudden a huge scrolling script came on the screen and the words "What are you doing all alone in here, singing to yourself?" It freaked me totally out to have someone apprehend me in my solitude, speaking as if so near. And now that I've progressed to this point, I wonder: What is a blog? Is anybody going to bother me in here? How does all this stuff work? What. is. it?

Whatever it is, my five grown kids and their mates are very happy about it. I no longer send them long obsessive emails at 6:30 AM about all that's happening in their lives and my mind. They don't have to feel guilty and wonder what I'm doing when they are out and about. They have a pretty good idea where I am and what I'm doing. I can just play play play play play! The peripheral activities that come with a blog can keep you so busy that when you're not writing, you can be checking your stats in all kinds of places and ways. That means you can see where you readers are, maybe not exactly, but approximately. In the first week I woke up in the middle of the night, excited just to "check the stats". Basically, to make sure all five of my kids had read it. A little map helps to pinpoint your readers. If you get one two-second hit from your next door neighbor, the whole United States lights up, including Alaska. It's great if you happen to be in need of a few delusions of grandeur. You can pretend to be Arianna Huffington or David Ignatius, setting the world on fire.

You can really play! You can write and unwrite. You can do it then you can undo it. You can analyze and prioritize and organize til your heart's content. I could make a night of watching my site meter move up in tiny increments of visitors per hour. The whole thing is hysterical! And it's free! You can be in your own little Icelandic silent chat room. Stick some little ads on there for fun. If you build it they will come.

Once a few weeks back I blogged about raising chickens in a post-modern age. I told the story of my chicken-raising efforts when the kids were young, how I wanted to kill a chicken for Sunday supper like my grandmother used to do. I discovered through Google Analytics that some poor soul in India spent nearly 3 minutes on my site after doing a Yahoo search from a dial-up for "kill a chicken." Every time I think that someone clear across the world in Mumbai, maybe during a sleepless night listening to a neighbor's rooster, spent 2 mins 37 futile secs searching my little blog to find out how to kill a chicken, I feel grateful humbled and amazed.

I read about a ninety year old woman in Central America who started writing a blog and has thousands of readers. How? Who? What? When? Where? It's astonishing, it's
exhilarating. It's almost as good as my Soloflex Whole Body Vibration machine! It's really got me going. It's got me so I don't know what I'm doing. It's got me so I can't sleep at night.