WRITING FOR THE BLOGOSHPERE AND BEYOND

Writing, and commenting, on blogs. and an apology

I've been thinking a lot about all the blogs out there in the blogoshpere/blogland, and about all the wonderful people i have met. I have made so many friends. Sometimes it is overwhelming! And I still have trouble realizing that there are SO MANY of you out there who care about the same things I do, who are inspired by design and color and detail, who are active, every day, in searching out and presenting the world of design.

I, like so many others in design, work alone. I have a studio/office downtown. I worked from home for many years when my daughter was small, then made the big move to a real office. After ten years there I moved again (a fourth floor walk up was a pain in the-you-know-what, but also very lonely) and have been in my great studio in the Cunneen-Hackett building for five years. No stairs; parking right out the door; friends!; communal lunches.... it's great. But, there is no getting away from the fact that I DO work alone. And with the internet, the phone rarely rings.

Ah yes, the internet. I love it (x 10?). My husband would disagree! But for me, as for so many of you, it is what connects us. And now, with blogging, I feel part of such a large community. It's truly wonderful. Not to sound too corny....but it cheers me up each and every day. Don't laugh. Again, working alone, you need feedback and positive reinforcement.

Why am I writing this (and what's with that apology up in the top line?), you ask. My friend, Kathysue, at Good Life of Design, had a post last week that started me thinking. Her title was : "To Comment or Not to Comment?!" Go and take a look. For all of you who are bloggers, it will have a particular relevance. Why is it that some posts garner so many comments? Why do some bloggers always receive lots of comments, even on a post that is not particularly spectacular or even well researched? Why do some bloggers just not receive many comments? Is it the nature of the blog? or is the post? Kathysue is right when she says you can read a post that is so thoughtful and well researched and clearly means a lot to the author, and yet, no one who is reading it seems to care enough to comment.

So, back to my apology. I read so many blogs every day. Sometimes I consider myself a sort of hunter-gatherer: I collect blogs. Yes, just as other people collect maybe, books, I collect blogs. Do you? Do you also spend hours and hours and hours each day, looking, reading, filing away, subscribing, commenting on blogs? I subscribe, either in email, Yahoo reader, or RSS to about fifty (yes, that's 50) blogs every day.

However, in dealing with this phenomenon I have become very casual and even lazy about commenting on other blogs. I am sorry. I wonder if this is part of the process and evolution of becoming a sesoned blogger. We begin to take these posts for granted. But as a fellow blogger, we know just how much time goes into a well written post. And so again, I say to all my many friends out there, I apologize if I don't seem to comment often enough.

Some of my readers are SO wonderful and not only leave a comment, but email me personally, and I just LOVE IT! So, thank you. We all love comments; it's really what makes us want to go on to the next post. But it's also what keeps us connected. And that, after all, is what it's all about!

Thanks to each and every one of you for helping me to go well over the 100 subscriber mark!!