wag the blog

this blogging business doesn't just take care of itself... it requires care, and patience (some blogs even require advance thought -- not this one, of course, but I've heard that some do...) and maybe more importantly, it requires the will not only to share, but also to explore our singular path, in ways we might otherwise never consider and for the benefit of an audience (okay, in my case a very small audience).

i've always considered this place not much more than a lark, but today i was given a bit of context that caused me to examine this two year unglued journey, and thus to find that much of it has been anything but carefree, despite my intentions.

that little revelation led me to muse on the whole endeavor... on the what we do, the why, and such (said musing a short affair that gave way, as usual, to impromptu composition), about what we find on other blogs and about what we share in our own.

see, my experiment in blogging has never had much truck with the walkabout world; yes, my mom reads, my wife occasionally tunes in, as does my daughter (which caused some fast suspension of a handful of racier posts!).

otherwise, i am, for all intents and purposes, never looked in the eye by a reader... thus the entire exercise is for the most part hypothetical.

sure, i have a few readers -- sitemeter tells me how many log on, from where they do so, the link that led them here, and so on... but even if those data represent real world folks, i don't meet them... i am thus emboldened in these pages to offer a certain truth of me that only those who know me best might ever glimpse -- to stand naked (get your mind out of the gutter, that's a blog of a different color) for the eye of a stranger (more than naked, actually -- for all its anatomical devotion the nude reveals neither heart nor soul).

anyway (yes, believe it or not, i am going somewhere with this), this morning i caught the eye of a colleague across the stage -- someone i had reason to believe had spent some time wandering these unglued halls -- who leveled an amused finger at me and exclaimed "hey, I know you."

it was a funny moment, that, because i realized that in a very odd way it was true... that virtual stranger does in fact know me in a way that few others who never sojourn here ever do, and in that sense becomes an instant friend.

weird.

the thought lends a bit more gravity to this place i usually so freely neglect, dismiss and disparage... i mean, if this place is to be me -- at least, a virtual and intimate representation thereof -- and if the chance exists that i might have to stand in the flesh on the odd occasion as the manifestation of said representation... well, it leads me to conclude that perhaps i should take this whole endeavor a bit more seriously.

that, or a bit less seriously. i haven't figured out which.