Nine months ago, Andee Carlsson talked me into starting this blog. She was interested in how I would decide where to live in Mexico.
I started with an audience of one. Because my friends and relatives kept asking me what I was up to, I gave them the blog address thinking it was a solution to the problem of repeating myself in email after email.
Well, that approach simply did not work. The people who I once wrote to regularly were not the least bit interested in reading a blog. They wanted personal attention. (I solved that problem by merely copying the text from the blog and then emailing it to them. Shhh. It's our little secret. After all, they won't be reading this.)
On the other hand, I have met a group of new friends from around the world who share a common interest in Mexico. It takes me time to make new friends. But in less than a year, I have made friends with several fellow bloggers -- and some of those relationships are closer than some of my friends who live in town.
And then there is the reunion crowd -- and I mean that literally and figuratively. I missed my 40th high school reunion last year. But our class has been getting together regularly for lunches and dinners. Through this blog, I have been able to keep in contact with several classmates I had lost contact with years ago.
The figurative reunion has occurred with people I knew in grade school, college, law school, the Air Force, and my various political activities. People from my past show up as often as Banquo's ghost -- but with less ominous portent.
I am curious whether other bloggers have had the same experience. Did you start writing for one audience, and now find an entirely different audience has discovered your blog?
And, before someone else says it: the best blogs have only one audience -- the blogger.
But, for you readers, what is it that brings you to these pages? This would be a great opportunity for those of you who have not yet written a comment, to step up to the bar.
Lay on, MacDuff.
I started with an audience of one. Because my friends and relatives kept asking me what I was up to, I gave them the blog address thinking it was a solution to the problem of repeating myself in email after email.
Well, that approach simply did not work. The people who I once wrote to regularly were not the least bit interested in reading a blog. They wanted personal attention. (I solved that problem by merely copying the text from the blog and then emailing it to them. Shhh. It's our little secret. After all, they won't be reading this.)
On the other hand, I have met a group of new friends from around the world who share a common interest in Mexico. It takes me time to make new friends. But in less than a year, I have made friends with several fellow bloggers -- and some of those relationships are closer than some of my friends who live in town.
And then there is the reunion crowd -- and I mean that literally and figuratively. I missed my 40th high school reunion last year. But our class has been getting together regularly for lunches and dinners. Through this blog, I have been able to keep in contact with several classmates I had lost contact with years ago.
The figurative reunion has occurred with people I knew in grade school, college, law school, the Air Force, and my various political activities. People from my past show up as often as Banquo's ghost -- but with less ominous portent.
I am curious whether other bloggers have had the same experience. Did you start writing for one audience, and now find an entirely different audience has discovered your blog?
And, before someone else says it: the best blogs have only one audience -- the blogger.
But, for you readers, what is it that brings you to these pages? This would be a great opportunity for those of you who have not yet written a comment, to step up to the bar.
Lay on, MacDuff.
