Blog-a-versary

Today is the one-year anniversary of Island Fever. Actually, that’s not literally correct, since I began the blog on September 1. But I think of Labor Day as the anniversary, since it was last Labor Day that I was lolling on the love seat in the most bored fashion, looked across the room at the boyfriend and said, “I think I’ll start a blog.” What astounds me now is that I’m not even sure how I knew how to do that, since I barely even knew what a blog was. I must have read an article on Blogger somewhere, because I wasn‘t a reader of other blogs. The only blog I’d read up to that point was Kevin Sites’ that he kept briefly during the Iraq War, until CNN made him take it down.

What a gift this blog has been for me during a period of my life when I’ve felt so isolated. And what an unusual, but glorious, phenomenon this whole blogging thing is--to sometimes feel safer to reveal my feelings in such a public forum than to have a conversation with an old (pre-blogging) friend. The only other place I’ve found a similar sense of community was in a 12-step program--because it really does feel like we have each other’s backs, so to speak. There seems to be an inherent sense of trust between bloggers (and I use the term to include journalers, diarists, etc. since I hardly keep a true blog) that I find to be remarkable. And the support…good god, the support I’ve received from those of you who communicate with me via your comments and emails. It’s meant more to me than my feeble words can convey right now.

So this is just to say thank you to those of you who have entered my life via this portal. It’s hard for me to remember now what my life was like pre-blog…oh yeah, really isolating (on my little rock in the ocean). You’ve helped me to replace my Island Fever with blogfever…and I couldn’t be happier about it.