The Wonderful World of Blogging.

When you first get into blogging you often don't know what to expect. We all get into it for different reasons, of course. Sometimes it's to cope with day-to-day stress or to help deal with a traumatic event or even to test your skills as a writer. Whatever the case, you may not often realize how entering this new world can affect you:

At first, when you start blogging you think to yourself, "I don't care if nobody reads this. It's my blog and it's for me." (Let's be honest. If you really didn't care about who read your innermost thoughts and ideas you'd have just bought a diary in the first place)

Things progress harmlessly enough. You publish post after post and, while you're sure no one reads your ramblings, you keep at it. You read other blogs from much more interesting people than yourself and leave a comment or two. Eventually, though, you see an actual reader has left a comment about the nice post you put up. This happens again and again and then, one day, you see it. Your first follower has appeared! That's when things get interesting. All of a sudden and without even realizing it, all you can think about is blogging:

Oddly, I haven't observed anyone saying that they've experienced any weight loss from blogging.

And all you want to talk about is blogging:

Over time, as you more gain followers and get more positive comments, you start to think, "Finally! People who get me." Blogging becomes all-consuming. It dominates all your free time and permeates every aspect of your life. Pretty soon, all you do is find opportunities to tell everyone about your blog. Your friends, your family, your coworkers, they all must partake in you genius:

You're hooked. You try to post daily. You want to post daily. All for fear that your followers may lose interest and find something more interesting to do. Blogging has taken control of your life and soon you want nothing else but to publish that next post:

Well, almost nothing else. Let's face it, for some things there aren't any substitute.

Meanwhile, you forget about the real reason you started blogging in the first place. This isn't your personal therapy session any more. No, now it's about the followers and the comments. You start to feel you can do no wrong and every keystroke is a magical pearl of wisdom and wit that is born out of the teardrops of angels.

Not so:

You aren't really as good as you think and you won't always get the validation you desire. You can sometimes find yourself taking it personally:

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Before too long, real life starts clamoring for attention, like the needy little attention whore life is. Petty annoyances like bills and loans and your job/kids/hygiene, whatever all decide to get in the way of your new, happy world. You can even suffer a bout of writers-block (Yeah! I can say it. I am a "writer" now so why not?).

Eventually, through trial and error and for reasons as varied as the reasons for getting into blogging in the first place, you find you do eventually find a balance. (If you're lucky you may even realize you aren't as good as you think you are and stop being a douchebag.)