blogging

I've been catching up on some blog reading having got a bit behind lately - I need to work out how to get a few more RSS feeds to sites sorted as I've been missing some good posts! At least with blogs they don't disappear after week like the radio programmes I keep meaning to listen to.

I've also spent quite a bit of time over the last few days reading back over some of my own early posts, looking back to before I came out here and dipping in and out of the intervening months wondering what picture of me it conveys. Kate has written a few posts about online identities and how people perceive us through our blogs and how much that tallies with the flesh and blood versions of us and the shock of finding people were not always how or even who they seemed to be (couldn't find the post I wanted though when I looked just now but this is on a similar vein!).

I've never really tried to focus this blog on anything inparticular (as those who have been reading for any length of time will know!), it has just been whatever felt like it needed written at the time. I know out there reading this are Mum & Dad (an incentive to use the spellcheck if ever there was one!), one or two other family members, a selection of (F)friends from various parts of my life some of whom have known me many years, others just months and to varying degrees of closeness. There are those I only really know online - like connections picked up post WGYF with other participants I didn't really get to know at the time (well I was kinda busy...) and some people who have come across this blog by accident (if there is such a thing) or through links from friends blogs or the Quaker blogwatch.

Blogs have meant there are those I've kept up with that I probably wouldn't have otherwise, and because of the time I spend reading them I suspect this has been at the expense of writing to others I maybe would have emailed if I'd had more time. It has also strengthened various friendships, sometimes extended them into a realm they probably never would have reached otherwise as through this media we've shared ideas and parts of our lives we wouldn't have thought to otherwise.

I have a quote from Richard Bach's book 'Illusions' as the signature to my emails

"Every person, all the events of your life, are there because you have drawn them there.
What you choose to do with them is up to you."

Blogs I suppose are just another way of drawing us to each other, and what we make of them is up to us.