Happy Domino Day

I started this blog in February of 2007. It sprouted from a half day class offered to staff at the library. It was about web social sites. We were introduced to many types of sites. Blogging was one.

We were instructed to come to class with a topic we could write a few words about to start our own blog. The only experience I'd had with blogs before that day was in connection to the state 4A basketball play off games that my son's band played for. We didn't have cable and the game that night wasn't on the radio, so periodically through out the evening I logged onto a local paper's sports blog to get an update of the score. I pictured a young man sitting in the stands typing on his laptop every ten minutes or so. I certainly appreciated this thing called blog and could sense it's value for me in gathering obscure sports minutia. Frankly, I didn't see it's use beyond this. Of course I didn't really give it much thought.

Other than that first bare bones blog exposure, I'd no other frame of reference. The class was fun. We learned about flickr, librarything, facebook, youtube and many more I can no longer recall. Near the end of class we were to create and post one entry on our own personal blog. Hence, My Scarlet Letters.

I loved it instantly. I loved selecting the design, the colors, the attitude of my blog page. I wrote a short but profound couple of paragraphs for my 'Grand Opening.' My heart was happy and warm. I then clicked something and all those profound words of magic were gone. Not to be retrieved. I felt like water swirling down a drain. Stupid blog. Whose bright idea was this? Probably the same guy who came up with SUVs.

I started typing again but of course those pure-hearted virgin words were long gone. Plus I only had another three minutes to get something, anything, up and SAVE IT THIS TIME, genius. It wasn't at all the same but I got it done and left class pretty excited and telling everyone I passed in the hall that I had a new blog. Yea!

My first blog post was titled I Dream in Red. My second was Sand in My Clogs.

I haven't gone back and reread any entries in a very long time. I really love my blog. It feels like a building I've constructed. It feels good to look back and see the titles, the dates. I'm even good with the spaces between entries.

For the few days immediately following a new blog entry, I'll check my personal e-mail to see if there are any comments. Sometimes so, sometimes not. I'm good either way on most days. If I've posted something particularly personal or exposing in nature, I confess to being especially hopeful that there will be at least one comment. But for me, the blog is the reward, not the comments. I've evolved this way.

I've been posting a lot this month so when I checked my e-mail this week and there was a new comment, I wasn't surprised. Until I noticed that the title of the blog wasn't at all what I expected. Instead of a blog comment on Daily Bread or Back-off Man, I'm a Scientist, it was a comment on Sand in my Clogs. My second post. Dated February 2007. How odd. I went back and read the comment. I didn't recognize the commentator's 'name' so I clicked on it to see where it would lead. Pretty much no where.

Mysteries like this can swim in my head for a couple of days. Did someone google the words 'sand' and 'clogs' in a blog search and this is one of the results they got? Were they looking for something specific and ran across my blog accidentally? Were they leaving bits of bait in numerous blogs hoping for nibbles for one reason or another? My imagination travels many trails. Or more like, barks up and down and around many trees. Maybe it's someone...... See? See how my head can run with possibilities? I'll stop now because it doesn't really matter, such details.

Whatever the reason this comment came about, what matters is the ripple effect that it helped cause. Me going back and reading through some of those very early, innocent, sweet and purely Barbie posts. It was wonderful and a bit melancholy. I miss the tones of those first posts. The pure optimism. The endless potential. I confess to not exactly feeling that, lately. I do not want to dwell on this but the words that come to mind about the state of things lately would be struggling, striving, stumbling, stuck. Instead I would like to request revival, renewal, re-energized and regroup. I need rebirth, refresh. I should invent a t-shirt with the logo of the refresh icon printed on the front.

I'm thankful for capricious comments that impact my insight, instigate my inspiration.
Re-ignition. Rebirth. Rebarbie.

I'm also all absolute appreciation for alliteration. (See, crazy left brain writing can be fun sometimes too....)