I tried to do a 'zine once. It was called "Bitch-zine," and Mitzi was our mascot. She was in the logo. It was back when I was still in my bitch about everything, feminazi phase. It lasted about 6 months, and featured articles, rants, and original poetry, by women, for women. It didn't do very well, and I didn't have much fun doing it. It was uninspired, and uninspiring. It felt like a chore.

From there I moved on to discussion forums. I still run a couple of these. For a while I had as many as four going. I had to dump a couple, because there was too much to administrate and maintain. I loved my forums. I loved being able to share my thoughts and ideas with people and get feedback. I still love this.

Meanwhile, not much was happening with my personal site. It was pretty standard, as far as personal site content goes. It contained basically the same things it contains today. A bio, samples of my writing, links to other sites I've done, and a standard page of links to sites I frequent. It never got updated, and it never got visited. Every now and then I'd think of a new design, but mostly I thought, what's the point? Nobody cared.

Several months ago I discovered Blogger. At the time I was unfamiliar with weblogs. I read about Blogger, and thought, what a great tool! I can post my random thoughts throughout the day, which will go along nicely with the "Random Thought Process" concept, and I can do it from work, too! I can communicate to anyone who wants to listen, without worrying about boring the patrons of my discussion forums with off-topic details of my life, and I can do it whenever the mood strikes me!

So, I signed up. I soon learned that there was an entire community of webloggers, I learned the jargon, I started getting to know people, and having fun. This is fun. It's a great release. Whether I want to share a short story I just wrote, or the frustration of rejection, or of being a single woman, or how much I dislike my job, or a link to a site I found interesting, or to a 'blog entry on someone else's web log that touched me ... the point is that I can, whenever I want to. The best thing is, people are listening. I get feedback, whether it's in the form of e-mail, or links, or getting 'blogged on another site, or repeat visitors in my site tracker. I have an audience. For the first time, it's not for nothing. People are paying attention.

I agree that there is a lot of crap to wade through to get to the good stuff. But the good stuff is worth wading through all the crap to find. Besides, what's crap to one person may be priceless treasure to someone else. There's room on the web for all of us. I'm going to continue to point the people who take the time to read my site towards other sites that I think are worthy of their time. And, though I don't expect it, I don't mind at all if it gets me a link back. I've already admitted to being a linkslut, though I do only post permanent links to the blogs that I actually visit daily, or as near to daily as I can.

Maybe it's the writer in me, always on the lookout for good characterization, but I'm fascinated with what makes people tick. My favorite blogs are the ones that give me a glimpse into the author's head: what they're thinking or feeling right at that moment when they post to their blogs. That's what I love about personal blogging, the spontaneity and the honesty. Little unedited snippets of who a person really is. When I find such a weblog, I post about it. If it's compelling enough to make me return regularly, I add it to the menu down at the bottom. Inter-blog linky-love seems to be the new phrase for this phenomenon. Even though it was meant sarcastically, I think it's a great concept. Bloggers helping each other build an audience. What is so wrong with that?

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