I've given a lot of thought about blogging and bloggers. It's one of the oddest things when a few of us gather and talk. We're all familiar strangers. We've constructed working friendships without an actual skeleton based on artificially collected impressions. It doesn't make it any less real, but it's amusingly awkward. We're all used to communicating via Ouija board. We've established some intimacy, but we don't know each other's social cues.Blogging is both terribly lonesome and very social. We're trying to reach out to others. It's not just about hearing our own voice, though sometimes it is. Often our motives are both greater and lesser than what we state as the reason for blogging in the first place. The truth is revealed nonetheless. Not every political blog is about politics. Not every sports blog is about sports. We reveal our hands slowly sometimes, over the course of many months. Our language gives us away. We are who we say we are.
But you never know... not for sure until you look somebody in the eye.
Saturday, sitting with a handful of this strange, nearly secret society, I was amazed at how close I'd come with my assessments of the people I'd read. Good people, every one of them. Honest, thoughtful, funny, smart and a little brave to come sit in a strange neighborhood to have coffee with someone they could only barely know.
2 comments:
It was a pleasure! And I appreciate the hand-holding during the plunge. I was feeling a little outta my element. :)
Indeed. Saturday confirms what I already believed- West Virginian bloggers are some of the coolest people on the planet.
It was great meeting you, Bill.
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