Blogging and Real Life

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At the Writers, Authors, and Publishers Fair last week the keynote speaker said that when she interviewed a person they weren't as forthcoming as she would have liked. She said people tend to be more closed in face to face interviews. She then said something interesting. She found when she looked at blogs by those same people she learned more because they were more open in a blog than they were in person. I'm finding that true as well. I'm normally a very private person, and yet when I blog I find myself more open than at any other time. I don't know who's going to read my blog, and I don't know what kind of comments I'm going to get from the blogs I write. What I do know is that I sit at this computer in my living room now, where I brought my laptop earlier today so I could blog and watch the game at the same time. I also know I write from the heart about things going on in my life. It's an honest sketch of who I am. It contains my feelings, my likes and dislikes, and hopefully the real me behind the glasses. I've written about my children, grandchildren, my home situation, my broken leg - which is getting better and is most likely mended, but the leg needs to function the way it used to and that is taking time as well. Somehow I feel I've put my son who lives with me in a bad light. He's a good kid, and not even a kid anymore, he's an adult with a good head on his shoulders. Yes, he does tend to voice his opinion about things and I do feel sometimes that he just doesn't understand. We each have our areas of interest so to him my wanting and yes, needing, a new computer seems frivolous to him. Whereas Pip needs immediate help, help that no matter how I look at it, isn't going to happen today, tomorrow, or next week. On the other hand, I know nothing about the world of gaming from the standpoint of the Xbox. I only know about the kind of gaming done on a computer. In some ways they are the same and in others vastly different. I'm not going to pretend to know anything more than the names of the games he buys and spends hours playing. Now I feel like I'm defending him and me. The point of this blog is that I've noticed people tell more about their lives through a blog than they do in person, mostly because they can't see the person who will open it and read it, and respond to it. Nor do they know the person. What I have found is that people all over the world are the same. We all have feelings, go through similar situations, like and dislike the same thing. The adage I learned as a kid that 'you're not alone' is so true in the blogging world. We can let our hair down and not be afraid of who is going to read what we write. It is also through the connections we make with each other that we make virtual friendships because we find someone who does understand what we are going through. My last two years have been a nightmare. I went from being financially stable with a good job to being fired from a job I had for over 11 years and due to my age was unable to find another. I had a work at home job that turned out to be a scam. My home is in foreclosure due to unemployment, my dog needs surgery, and I need a new computer because my desktop died a couple weeks ago and the laptop is also very old and I don't know how long it will operate. I can't even work on the manuscript I thought was saved in Dropbox because the desktop didn't save it to the current version because it was dying and I hoped to have that novel published this next year. And then on top of everything I ended up in the hospital for a week in July with pneumonia and also found to have ulcerative colitis and in September broke my leg. I don't need anything more happen at the moment. So when the keynote speaker said she was able to find out so much more about people on a blog, it's completely understandable. We simply don't know the person on the other side of the post or if the blog will ever be read and if it isn't, it's okay because it becomes a personal diary for the person writing it. From the real me - thanks for reading.