Blog Spot

MAYRAV SAAR

Register columnist

I had always thought of blogs as something that wait, never mind. I had never thought of blogs at all. Ever.

Hubby was an early blogging adopter. Some of my friends and acquaintances had blogs, too. But I never read them. Never cared. And I couldn't understand why anyone else would, either.

Blogs to me were like video games and fake eyelashes, trends that require certain skill sets I neither possess nor have the motivation to acquire.

But now I am a regular contributor to a blog - bigaction.blogs.com – and it's making me see the whole blogosphere in a different light, which is to say I see it at all.

How someone as criminally vain as myself failed to foresee the joys of blogging earlier is mystifying. Blogs are like little billboards that say, "I'm worth cyberstalking!" Or, more importantly, "I'm worth listening to," which, whenever any of us opens our mouths, is all we're ever really saying anyway.

But I've found there's something else to blogs, too. Something I hadn't expected.

Big Action is a blog Hubby and a few of our friends started a couple of years ago. When I was asked to join as an editor, I agreed more out of loneliness than any burning desire to pontificate. Stay-at-home mommydom means I can't see my friends as much as I'd like anymore. I don't have that rat-a-tat-tat of ideas that a newsroom once afforded me. But I do have a high-speed wireless Internet connection and a fancy laptop. With them I can, at least virtually, share a few thoughts and peer into my friends' heads for theirs.

I usually sweat my postings. What, other than Zev, do I have on my mind? What do I even know about? What if no one finds my posts funny?

What if no one comments? What if what if I woke up one day and found out I care an awfullot about what my friends think of my blog posts?

Ah but what if I found out my friends care this much, too?

When I told the other Big Action editors that I planned to write a column about why I blog, I couldn't believe the response. Every last one of them had the same reason for posting as I do: a longing to stay in touch with each other, to stay anchored in a community of kindred spirits. In other words, they're just as lame as I am. And they have jobs! "It's really the principal way I get to hang out with you and everyone," Lisa said. "Discourse, exchange ideas, share tips, laugh, smackdown in the comments section. Virtually. Gosh, that's sad."

Who knew that photos of the inside of Leslie's refrigerator and mean little comments about each other's music tastes could be the glue that kept a group of friends together?

Eric called it "a never-ending cocktail party conversation," a way to keep in touch with one another when we know darn well that the "we should get together sometime" e-mails we share with other friends generally go unredeemed.

Chris said Big Action "makes me feel like we're not all 1,000 miles away from each other these days, even when we are."

Leslie said something about liking food.

The point is, we miss each other. We're busy. We're frantic. And even those of us who work outside the home are not immune to profound loneliness. We need our friends. And on our little blog - with all its talk of freakish animals, stripper shoes and the plot points of "Lost" - we've got them.