Blogging

Every once in a while a blogger will get some unexpected affirmation.

For me, it was when a blogger with one hundred times my audience (at least) responded to an email and mentioned a few of my "essays" that he had read. 

For him, I think, it was the fact that I vividly remembered a essay he had posted almost five years ago.

Bloggers write.  We write.  And then we write some more.  Quantity has a quality all of its own.

Every once in a while we write something durable, something worth remembering.  Cobbles of flint in a substrate of chalk.

Some writers are more gifted than others.  I have no illusions.  I am near the middle of the pack.  I write like a drunk flailing with a machete.  I compensate for deficiencies of skill with energy and volume and loudness.  I hope that the substance of the ideas I am throwing out there will transcend my shortcomings as a writer. I am not alone.

For my part, when I write one of those nuggets of flint,  I think it is the Holy Spirit recruiting my fingers to say something.  I take no credit for anything meaningful that I write.  That would be presumptuous on my part.  There is too much chalk to claim otherwise.

Another affirmation occurs when I consider taking an essay in a particular direction...but then choose not to.  Later, in comments, a reader points out that possibility or draws the analogy I decided to not develop. It is illuminating to learn that there are other people out there making the same connections that I am making.  I am not alone. 

Comments are oxygen to the blogger.  "Wow!  Somebody actually read my drivel and thought about it!!!"

I propose that July 9/10, 2015 be "Affirm a blogger day."  Readers, you probably hit ten blogs in the course of your day.  Pick one blogger who is, in the words of the immortal Rocky Balboa, "a ham-and-egger", and comment on their blog.  Even if all you tell them is, "Most of what you write a bunch of crap, but every once in a while you make me think.  Today's post was one of those days."

It will make their day. 

And you will get another year of free reading.