Blogging for Real

Hello everyone.  I haven't blogged since March of 2010 and in the meantime I've joined a new organization called "Beer and Blog".  These are real live people with whom I will be interacting regularly who might also be reading my blog.  That's scary.  Sure, I've been blogging for years, and yes I have a few close friends who know me and occasionally peruse my blog.  And yes, I have posted a link on Facebook, but those are still mostly friends and family and people who've loved me for years and will love me no matter what.  For them, my blog is the equivalent of a child's refrigerator art.  They'll love me no matter the quality of my writing.  But this "Beer and Blog" thing is bigger than any of that.  These people know me BECAUSE I have a blog.  After six years of flirting, this relationship with blogging has suddenly and unexpectedly gotten serious.  This is the equivalent of the boyfriend moving in.  I have to care about what I look like in the morning.  I have to start, at the very least, correcting my typos.

So let me start by saying that several of the most recent posts below are actually old thrown away posts that I pulled out of my blogger wastebasket, uncrumpled the sheets, and posted for viewing.  They are not pretty.  I did not correct them.  Heck, I hardly even reviewed them.  They have gum stuck to them, are covered with crumbs and tea stains, and they are still very wrinkled.  But sometimes trash makes the best art and I've decided not to throw anything away.  I'm not doing this professionally.....yet.  This is not my day job.  So for the time being I will let them stay as they are, nasty and messy and poorly formed free-flowing thoughts.  Plus I think our mmistakes can be helpful to others.

I think it's interesting that on this, of all days, my Aunt Alice who has known me since I was a child but with whom I have rarely spoken as an adult, and who knows nothing about my blog just happened to ask me:  "Are you still shy?" 

Well, Aunt Alice, we shall see....