Les Naifs de Blog

It appears that I have a family full of people who are new to the world of online publishing. This has led to a series of amusing little exchanges between my mother, my sister and myself about the ins and outs of the medium, along with a whole bunch of explanations ("Who's Dave?" being principal among them). Since the whole point of blogging (or at least something of the point of this blog) is to cut down on the number of times I have to repeat myself sequentially to relatives after the "phone tree" gets activated, I do hereby solemnly swear to try to write it all down here first so you don't all have to call me and email me to get the latest dish.

Once upon a time, a long time ago in 2000, I had a job which kept me in front of a computer all day long. When you have time to kill but you can't leave your computer and you can't play solitaire, you quickly discover that there are magical websites where people talk about themselves and you can eavesdrop without getting in trouble. The "Weblog". I was a regular reader of the message boards at The Motley Fool website, and one day someone mentioned a craft blog they followed, Not Martha. From Not Martha, I found loobylu. From loobylu, I found Sewgeeky, from Sewgeeky I found Going Bridal (she was planning her wedding and going crazy) and Going Jesus (after she climbed off the crazy wedding train), French Toast Girl, Keri Smith, and Super Hero Designs, and the world was suddenly beautiful. People around the world talking about making things! Then the mothership, Dooce. Then there were the political blogs, a can of worms to be sure, which I won't list here. People speaking for themselves, outside the pressbox. Blogs have opened my eyes, my mind, and my heart. Blogs have shaped me and helped me to define myself more clearly, at a time when I feel less and less connected to "the world" as it is portrayed by mainstream media. In the blog world, your mainstream is whatever you choose it to be. This is my kind of place.

Sometime soon I'll edit my linkbar on the left and you can take a tour of the voices and ideas that I seek out every day. Many of the blogs in the previous paragraph are still at the top of my list today. I hope to introduce some of you to these same voices that we might share them together.

The reason I "blame" Dave for inspiring me to create this blog is that Dave is the first blogger I know personally. We worked together in California, and recently I tracked him down to see what he was up to. He pointed me to his blog, and suddenly my blog experience was transformed from an impersonal to a personal one. If Dave could do it, I could do it. So here I am.

The way the blog should work, if we all follow the same protocol, is that I will write about something and post it here for you to read. When you read it, you may find that you have a question or a comment about what I have written. There's a little piece of text at the bottom of each new post that says "# Comments" (where # ranges from 0 to any number). If you click on that text you can leave a comment for me right there in the blog. No more pesky emails or phone calls! Plus, the comment is permanently associated with the post, so we'll always know what we were talking about. It's pure genius, I tell you!