A day late...

I suppose I could back date this, but since I'm not officially blogging everyday anyway, I figure it's no big deal. Sundays are massive meal days and everyone comes here and eats stuff. So that's where I was yesterday.

All this blogging going on reminded of something I read on the internet by someone who did not want to be called a "blogger" because "bloggers" assume their lives are so interesting someone else wants to read about them. Apparently this person didn't agree that someone else's life/opinion was interesting, only his/hers. It made me wonder who was truly the most "self-absorbed."

When I started this blog two years ago, it was sort of like casting a line out into the ocean: Here's what I think. Anyone else think this? Am I alone in this? Can someone talk me out of this?

I've had one rule that I've stuck to since then: I never delete a comment, unless it's an obvious ad or at the request of the commenter (I think that happened once when a comment inadvertently posted twice). I don't claim to think in absolutes and I don't require total agreement.

Of course, I've never had anyone get really nasty. The few trolls that have stopped by have been immediately recognized and summarily ignored. They've never come back as I can tell.

I know a lot of people just hate the word "blogger," but it's just a matter of semantics to me. I yam what I yam. As in anything, there is good and bad and it used to be the same for the term "freelance writer." I remember going on a job interview and the interviewer making the snide comment that "at least you weren't a 'freelance writer.' That's just another way of saying 'unemployed.'" Instead I had a laundry list of jobs that had absolutely nothing to do with the writing job for which I was applying and which I subsequently got because he apparently thought that, since I could make a bank balance at the end of the day, I could put together a column. Yet he would have turned down James Michener because he was 'unemployed' (...and dead...).

So call it what you will. If you are threatened by the fact that there are people out there sending words over the internet that are trite or cloyingly cute or too personal or grammatical disasters and those people are called the same thing as you with your well-organized, sharply edited prose -- well, get over yourself.

I'm rather glad there is a venue for everyone to express their opinions. Because I think eventually the only opinion you will hear out of the mainstream media will be Barbra Streisand's.