When I came to blogging, I was from publishing. I had the skill set. I thought having a blog would a perfect place to keep up my discipline as a writer. Maybe at the same time, I could build a place where people might get away from cell phones in elevators. Cell phones on airplanes and in elevators bother me. The conversations they allow steal my brain space and make me invisible while someone talks about a cat named, “Fluffy”,that I can’t bring myself to care about.
I made a blog that was the backyard where I grew up complete with river bank and the old white oak tree. Everyone was welcome — without their cell phones.
Like most new bloggers, I wasn’t prepared for the people I would meet, the conversations that would happen. I had no understanding of the universe of learning and belonging. I fell in love with the exchange of thinking.
I found that blogging was as much about listening, and reading, as it was about writing, and speaking. Someone likened to a country store. For me, it became my dad’s saloon, a place where people meet, swap stories, try on ideas.
Bloggers know that they don’t have the only answer. It’s darn refreshing and appealing.
Once I had lived on airplanes, dreaming, imagining, and writing. Now I live inside people’s computers, and they look for me there.
The generous, independent, spirited communication is breathtaking. It’s humbling. Words last forever online. Bloggers know that. They value and live by that. So the level of discussion rises. Thoughts are considered before they are shared.
Now I call bloggers daily on my own cell phone, from the privacy on my home, never in your elevator.
Some folks think it’s a telephone call. I think of it as blogging on via telephone. We have a real time conversation. It’s not about a cat named Fluffy. We talk about creativity, technology, how the world is changing, the rudeness of multitasking, the ways people interact, and the excitement of being part of something in which people from all over the world are having a learning conversation.
Bloggers are the living Internet.
I meet my blogger friends in the real world face to face. The conversation works the same way as it does online. We listen to each other and we learn. We talk about ideas, dreams, and ways to help each other. Somehow we always end up on that topic- how we will help each other.
I’ve come full circle from the real world back to the real world, but I’ve a different world view. I know more about what it could be. I’ve been in the company of bloggers.
Liz Strauss also writes for Liz Strauss at Successful-Blog
