On Blogging and Buddies

My fellow bloggers understand this community and the value of the friendships we’ve formed. Like me, you’ve probably seen bloggers come and go, sometimes with no word, leaving you wondering. I appreciate it when writers give a head’s up that they’re shoving off.

Still, when one of my longest-running blog buddies gave the ol’ WordPress farewell, I cried a little. It felt like a death, which I admit is kind of ridiculous, but I was devastated. Chatter Master has been almost like a mom to me (Almost, Mom! I said almost!) and a surrogate Sensei, since she’s a fourth degree black belt in Taekwondo. (It took years for me to learn this amazing, unexpected fact!) Also, that means she outranks my sensei. Heh heh. Her encouragement with my martial arts struggles took her loveliness and wisdom to a new level.

Bossy Babe has also left us. To this I maturely responded in the comments with a string of “Nooooo!!!”s. Comparatively, I only knew her a short time, but I sure enjoyed her company. She also led me to Stuart, who in turn led me to Cindy, so I’m eternally grateful.

The only blogger I’ve met in real life, so far,

is Julie Holmes. When I was in her state, she drove Three Hours One Way to pick me up and buy me tea before driving those three hours back!!! It was so wonderful. Meeting Julie, not the tea, well probably both, but the tea was far less memorable. We lamented later that we forget to get a picture!

Julie has been so busy writing her next books, she fell behind on blog reading, which I forgive. 😉 So it was amusing to see notification after notification, roughly three minutes apart, at the start of this year. She downed nearly 50 posts!

Clearly not 50, but only so many can fit on my screen at once.

I couldn’t help but text her, as I was genuinely curious.

She commented on the last post:

On her blog she wrote to me:

One resolution accomplished! (BTW, hubs kept asking why I’ve been laughing all day. I told him I was reading your blog.)

I so appreciate how y’all make me laugh too.

After this post where I included some of may favorite comments, Mike wrote:

That made me laugh. A lot.

Then there’s Andrew who laid out an entire novel plot involving characters from my Joy-Jitsu world: Instructor, Enthusiastic Teen, and Surfer Dude 1. That may require its own blog post.

To top things off, the aforementioned Stuart said:

“I can always rely on you to bring a huge dose of charm and sunshine to this part of the web!”

I mean, with friends like you, who needs real life?

Kidding, but my last post about sharing my blog with Sensei garnered some interesting comments, namely people saying they keep their blog world a secret from their real life friends, even calling me brave for letting the Monkey out of the bag.

How intriguing. I don’t hide the fact that I have a blog from my real life friends, but I don’t know that any of them read it, which I’m fine with either way. I think blog buddies work well for introverted writers like me: I like friends, but I also like staying at home. In the blogging world, I get to interact with friends whenever we feel like it from the comfort of my pajamas without having to scrub the guest toilet first.

So my questions for you are:

1. Have you been bummed/curious/concerned when blog buddies disappeared with no word?
2. Have you cried or been sorrowful over a BB saying, “Peace out, blog world?”
3. Have you met or hope to meet any BBs?
4. Do you hide your blog from your real life friends, and if so, why?

Thank you for reading. I appreciate you all. 🙂

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