For Better, For Worse

One of my favorite comic strips, For Better or For Worse, signed off this weekend with this beautiful strip.

But that's not what this post is about. This one is a meme, with the subtitle:
5 Ways Blogging Changed My Life

This meme was created by L.L. Barkat at Seedlings in Stone, who was kind enough to tag me.
Here are the rules:

1. Write about 5 specific ways blogging has affected you, either positively or negatively.
2. link back to the person who tagged you
3. link back to this parent post (I'm not so much interested in generating links, but rather in tracking the meme so I can perhaps do a summary post later on that looks at patterns and interesting discoveries.)
4. tag a few friends or five, or none at all
5. post these rules— or just have fun breaking them

So, here goes:
1. I've found a new object that triggers my Catholic guilt. When my blog languishes from lack of posts, I feel guilty of neglect. Dear readers, please know how badly I feel when you must go for days on end without hearing from me. [Ahem]. Now that I've gotten that out of my system...

2. Before I started this blog I was virtually clueless about the world of blogging. I hadn't read any blogs. I don't even remember how I started finding blogs to read. Now I've got several tabs on my Google home page for blogs. And I enjoy reading them all because of what I learn from them - about life, writing, and the people who blog. Some regularly make me laugh (BatteredHam, Beast Mom), some make me cry (...another chapter) and many I am glad to call friends (Llama Momma, Reconciliation Blog).

3. I spent some time obsessing over my blog posts for the first six months or so. Every little thing that would happen to me would have me thinking, "hey, this would make a great blog post!". Now I just think, "hey, I want to remember to put this in my Christmas letter this year - I'd better blog about it".

4. I've found my voice. Or maybe I'm continuing to find it. A certain style seems to prevail over time in my posts, a way of looking at things, phrasing my thoughts. Blogging has been a great exercise for me as a writer in ways that my paper journal could never be.

5. I've heard your voices. I love that blogging is an interactive medium. I write articles, but rarely hear how they were received by the reader. Here I can hear back from readers immediately (hint, hint to all of you lurkers). It's very satisfying. But not only that, it is so good to be able to learn what other people think about the things I'm thinking about (whether they agree or disagree).

Tagged: anyone listed above who cares to share on this topic, along with Wily Hacker (who could use a new post sometime soon), Beth at A Quest For Relevance, and Breaths of the Heart.