A blog on blogging

A friend and a daughter both have said I inspired their own blogs. Josh, an expat (and friend) living in Japan, wrote “I want to thank you for introducing us to blogging... Tomomihas started one of her own (in Japanese). We were inspired by yours.” He also said, “I have lots of stuff I want to post and share with people. Also, I am linking it to the online text I am writing so that my students can get a foreigner's perspective as well as practice reading real English.” His blog www.shinmatsudogaijinlife.blogspot.com gave me the feeling I had visited Japan.

I also like checking in with my daughter’s blog http://lnelson1218.blogspot.com From her blog I keep up with the activities of my grandkitties and how she kept the tradition of the family license plate 49T which has been held by father, me and a cousin in Massachusetts, my mom and dad in Florida and now she has it in Virginia. Some families hand down jewelry, we in a family that barely tolerates the necessity of cars, have a license plate. Although we would have discussed it on the phone, her writing opened another level in the information she shared.

Mary in Scituate and Rose in New York say they read me regularly to see what I’m doing like I read almost-relative Kirk www.kisrael.com regularly to see what’s new in his life

Besides being a method of checking in on lives, writing a blog serves another purpose for me . I useit as a warm up writing exercise. Instead of doing a ten minute free write in my journal I have switched to the blog.

But in exchanging emails with Josh, it hit me the blog serves another purpose. It lets me live experiences twice, one in real time and when I write about it I can recreate the feelings. Although I long ago chose life in the slow lane, it makes me more conscious of the details that bring color and music to my life.