my shiny red and blue spandex.

I went to a small shindig recently that my friend Sarah was throwing. We were all sitting in the living room and talking about the internet. I've already covered that I don't do Facebook, and so I don't really get it. People who use it seem to be constantly checking it. I don't know what they're doing with it, but it seems to be addictive, which makes me curious about it and against it at the same time.

And then they were talking about their blogs. I don't talk much about my blog in conversation. In fact, I was listening to the conversation when Sarah piped up, "Sandra has a good blog!" to which I replied, "No, I don't." See, I was being sneaky there. I was actually just denying that I have a good blog, which is called being modest. But other people probably interpreted it as me denying that I had a blog at all. I didn't want to talk about my blog to these complete strangers, so it was my intention for them to jump to that conclusion, which is called being misleading or possibly lying.

The whole conversation weirded me out. To talk about your online entity seemed almost taboo, like you were giving away your secret identity. It would be like Clark Kent walking around with his dress shirt half unbuttoned, revealing his shiny red and blue spandex.

But I think I'm probably just weird about my blog. For a long time, I never let anyone read anything I wrote. Then after I started the blog, I never told anyone it existed or where they could find it. I've slowly gotten comfortable with the idea of others, strangers and friends and family alike, reading what seems to me to be personal. Even when I'm talking about something that isn't personal at all, it feels that way because I guarded my writing for so long. Also, I hold back very little.

It throws me off when someone talks to me in person about a blog entry. They want to discuss something about me in a familiar fashion, as if we'd already had a conversation about it. But I never had such a conversation with them. How do they know? HOW DID THEY GET INTO MY MIND??? But then I remember that I wrote a blog about it. That second of confusion and paranoia happens every time, and honestly, I feel off-kilter for the whole conversation.

But I'm glad I did it. I'm glad I started writing on a regular basis, and I'm glad I am sharing it. It's an excellent medium for me to get stuff out there, and I swear I think I'm becoming more introspective because I'm constantly thinking about turning everything into a blog entry. And it fosters relationships. I know that people feel closer to me when they read it, when they know the little things going on in my life and when they read thoughts that might not come across in conversation. And while it doesn't happen as often as I might like, I do get emails and comments that start conversations that might not otherwise have occurred.

I started the blog to get a book deal. Okay, not explicitly to get a book deal, but I saw that sort of thing happen for other bloggers and the idea was sorta hanging out in the back of my head that that would be a pretty cool thing to happen to me. But I am not famous, and I don't have that many readers outside my family. I could print everything out and staple it together, and my mom would think it was awesome, but that's not the same. Oh well.