When Bloggers Meet
I have often mentioned that I didn’t spend any time considering whether I was interested in blogging. It was nothing more than an impulse. One day I thought that it might be interesting to try it out and so I did.
Had I really spent any time considering it I would have done things differently. I certainly would have come up with a better moniker than Random Thoughts-Do They Have Meaning? Who would have known that so many other people would use such a non-descript title. I really don’t like it, but after all this time it is developed a bit of brand equity so I don’t know that changing it makes sense.
Having jumped into the water without any regard for temperature or depth I didn’t have any idea that I would enjoy it as much as I have. I really was surprised by how much I got out of it. I never kept a journal or any sort of diary. This was a new sort of experience for me.
As I treaded water and learned how to swim in the blogosphere I experimented with topics to write about and discovered that I enjoyed being able to recount some very personal moments. I didn’t have that many readers and the few that I did were complete strangers. That made it easy to discuss things that I probably would never have volunteered.
In the early days a number of bloggers approached me with invitations to meet for lunch or a drink. I routinely turned those down as I was very guarded about peeling back the curtain. It was more comfortable to be the all powerful Oz and not just a man whose balloon had crashed near the Emerald city.
Over time I found that I developed relationships with some people and when the occasion presented itself I found myself agreeing to meet them in person. I recently added a new person to the few bloggers that I have met in the real world.
I recently had the pleasure of meeting The Misanthrope from Toner Mishap. After four years it was nice to put a face to the words and ideas. If you ask me if he matched the image I had of him I can’t really say. I really didn’t have a sense of what I expected his voice to sound like so the real thing wasn’t shocking at all.
But he did look a bit like some of the old pictures he had posted on the blog so I suppose that you could say that he looked as I expected him too.
The conversation was quite comfortable, not that I find that to be surprising. After four years of reading each other’s blogs we actually knew quite a bit about the other.
It does make me wonder. I had a nice time with a misanthrope. Whatever does that say about me. Maybe it is just proof that I am a curmudgeon. 😉 Anyway I am glad to have had the opportunity. We’ll have to do it again sometime.
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