Thursday, August 24, 2006

Blog, meet world

Somehow, my blogging and physical spaces have always had a disconnect. I've never really lived in the same area or frequently met many of the people who read my blog, and people around me haven't really read my blog much (they've never cared for that sort of thing, I guess). It's been changing over the past few months.

I re-use observations and insights that I've blogged about pretty often in regular conversation. It makes me look more well-read than I really am, since people don't realize that these are things I've given careful thought and time to. They (probably) assume this stuff is off the cuff.

However, I'm getting caught now - "I read that on your blog" is something I've heard a couple of times from a friend over the past few months. Another complained that he couldn't read my blog on his Pocket PC.

Yes, I'm pleased. I consider my blogging to be an important part of who I am (this was an exercise to try my writing skills, and I've realized I enjoy it a lot), and if people I consider good friends are taking the effort to visit my blog, that means a lot to me. The converse is also true - I am truly thankful for the acquaintances I've made and re-kindled over the Web since I started blogging. Some of these have spilled over to IM and email and have been rewarding to varying degrees.

In keeping with the fact that people blog for various reasons, I welcome a couple of new blogging friends (these are people I meet regularly in meatspace) - Brad and Shailu. Brad chronicles a very active lifestyle - hiking, sports and (here I hope to join him more often this winter) snowboarding. Shailu and I go back four years - the first time we met was at a CMU tradition - painting "The Fence" in the Indian tricolor on the eve of the 15th of August. Shailu's blog is kind of like mine -varied topics and life chronicles, though he is less into navel-gazing than I am.

Edit: Fixed grammatical errors and formatting.

No comments: