O Blog, My Blog

(With Apologies to Walt Whitman)

Dear Blog,

Did you know that's what we call you here? The Blog? All of you have somehow become some sort of collective to us here at home. We understand that you are individual people, we really do, but somehow to our way of thinking, you're a collaborative, united mass. I think of you like I would a flock of birds or a school of fish (except smarter- and better dressed, since fish and birds seldom wear anything by Nancy Bush) and I imagine you all on your own unpredictable, separate and individual paths within the flock, but still wheeling and turning on a dime en masse, one confederate of knitters.

When something happens Joe will ask me "Have you told The Blog?" or "What did The Blog say?" or, if it's really bad - "Are you going to tell the blog?" If I have a knitting problem or conundrum, Ken might suggest that I "ask The Blog" for an opinion or a solution. The girls are flattered when The Blog compliments them, the girls wouldn't want The Blog to know if they screwed up. The Blog is present during a great much of our days.

As of today, I have been writing this blog for precisely five years. When I began, there was none of The Blog. There were a few comments - as many as I deserved really, considering that I hadn't been blogging, that my pictures were shoddy and that it took me about 3 hours every day to make the blog happen, so horrendous were my technical skills. Back then, if I had a problem and Ken wouldn't answer his phone (having had the audacity to do something like have a life or do his paying job), the blog ground to a halt while I wept, read incomprehensible html things and hit "refresh" 46789 times like it might do something. (Actually, that really hasn't changed. Sorry Ken.)

As time went on, I came to realize that The Blog, as an entity, really wasn't me. I could write all I wanted to, I could say all I wanted to, and none of it had permanence or resonance or even importance if there was no-one there to read it, and I realized that The Blog, the whole thing, really relied on the people who read it, and commented and the communities that were around it. The Blog, as a whole, was nothing, not even really a blog without you, and that therefore, you were The Blog.

Over the years, we have spoken of you fondly, The Blog. We have said The Blog was so surprised!, or The Blog was so generous, or The Blog was so funny. Personally, I have said The Blog is so smart, The Blog understood how it could have happened, The Blog had a lot to say about that, or even - The Blog has brought me enormous comfort.

People have asked me too, over the years, what it is like to share your life with The Blog, and I have never really understood the question. It's true that there have been times that what The Blog had to say was not easy to hear, or times when The Blog had it's own ideas about who it was, or what it was here for, but overall, I cannot imagine living without The Blog, and the decision to share my life with all of you has reaped rewards that I couldn't imagine. Here, I haven't left the house in 9 days, and though the miracle of The Blog, I still have all my knitting friends with me... even if they can't form a collective opinion on skirt length and they are all (mostly) wearing unmatched knitwear.

I am less lonely because of The Blog.
I feel welcome many places because of The Blog.
I am less of a crazy knitting person because The Blog is crazy too.

Many, many thanks for a most remarkable journey. I adore each and every one of you. Thank you for giving me The Blog.