719. Alternatives To Blogging

I was born blogging.  Okay, that’s not true.  It’s not like the first words out of my mouth upon greeting the doc before he even had a chance to clamp my umbilical cord were “Hey, hand me that keyboard!”  No, I was actually blogging waaaaaaay before that—in utero.   

• “Update:  it’s toasty warm in here, but I think Mom ate sardines again—yuck.” 
• “Status:  sleepy.”
• “The Latest:  my eyelashes have started to develop, and I think I am feeling fingernails as well.” 
• “Question:  do you think I might have a twin in here?  or is that just a weird shadow?”

No, in reality there was no blogging back in the prehistoric dinosaur days of my youth, and thank goodness for that.  Fast forward to this century.  I discovered blogging less than two years ago when my unsympathetic co-workers at the high-end kitchen store got sick of me telling farfetched stories and one of my co-workers finally mustered the courage to say what the others had been thinking all along:  “MOV, write a blog.” 

Blogging quickly became more than a fun little diversion or interesting new hobby.  Like that left-over piece of chicken with cream and broccoli sauce that you forgot for a month in the back of the frig and now it turned into an unrecognizable space creature, my blogging addiction turned into something out of my control. 

It.  Was.  Bad.    

I would come home from working a long day at the high-end kitchen store and instead of spending time with my beloved family or at least pretending to greet them, I would dash up to the study and click the computer on, chanting “Please-be-comments-please-be-comments-please-be-comments.”  I would return from my weekly Target run, and before even unloading the red and white plastic bags full of cheap treasures, I would find myself in front of the computer clicking on “Blog Statistics” to see which posts were generating the most hits.  In the middle of a quiet dinner with the family, I would make up some elaborate excuse about how I think I left a light on upstairs again and need to turn off this instant so the cat doesn’t accidentally knock it over and cause a huge fire while we’re eating but then I would zip upstairs and forget all about the lamp while I was re-reading my latest blog post and double checking for new followers.    

The Husband is, of course, on to me. 

“Checking your blog again?” he inquires in a flat tone with the identical enthusiasm of a DMV clerk greeting his 189^th driver’s license renewal of the day.

“Checking your blog again?” mimic the children in the same world-weary manner, after hearing their father say it so many times. 

So what?  Yes, I am checking my blog again if you must know.  It’s not the worst habit in the world.  What if instead of checking my blog in my spare time, I went down to the animal shelter and got a puppy each time? 

Or what if, instead of checking my blog, I went to the kitchen and ate a cookie each time?

Or, what if instead of checking my blog, I went to our basement work-out room and worked out for a few minutes each time? 

The bottom line is:  if I didn’t blog, I would be a dog-collecting, cookie-gorging, obese, skinny, work-out girl. 

And who wants that? 

MOV  
(“Mistress Of Vision”)