My hat is off, won't you stand up and take a bow? [redux]

I discovered rather late in my blog life that I'm not like most bloggers; that is, I didn't begin blogging for the reasons that most people do. This will come as no surprise to anyone who knows me in real life. The fact that I don't do things the way most people do them, I mean.

It was my real-life friend Maria from whom I learned that many people write blogs as a way of keeping in touch with their friends and family. Maria moved to Canada five years ago, and started her blog to keep in touch with her family in Mexico. That's why her blog address is "mi vida en Toronto." (I understand a little Spanish, mostly learned from watching Bugs Bunny cartoons, and from taking vacations in Cuba.) Since then, her blog evolved into "The Naked KnitGirl." She also does chicken wing reviews. Her blog is much more than just the what-I-had-for-breakfast blog it was born as, but this poses a problem.

She can't tell her readers the best stuff.

So many times, when we were drinking at The Banknote, she'd tell me a story that would have me in stitches. She would say things like, "I just broke up with (insert boyfriend's name here), but he doesn't know it yet, and I might get back together with him by tomorrow."

I would laugh, and say, "You have to write that! It's hilarious!"

And she'd say, "I can't! He reads my blog!"

She's told me many other highly entertaining and salacious, stories too, and then said, "I can't write about that — my mother reads my blog!"

She can't write about work, because she's wisely wary of being dooced.

It's a shame. She has such great stories, but she can't tell them. And it's all because she started blogging under her real name.

It never occurred to me to write under my real name. In my real life, I tell my friends and family the real things, the true stories, the boring stuff that only families care about. I never imagined the Internet would be interested in any of that.

I never imagined the Internet would be interested in my stories at all.

I started writing my blog for me, and me only. No one I knew in real life knew anything about it. It never occurred to me to mention it to them. I wrote for many reasons, some of which I explained here, others that are too personal to explain to anyone, even to you, Gentle Reader.

So I wrote stories about the interesting and often weird people I'd meet in places like grocery stores and bars and airports (or bars in airports); people whom I'd never see again. People who would never, in a million years, read my blog. And even then, I would fabricate and obfuscate details, just in case, by some fluke, they did.

The only people who appear in my stories under their real names are the ones who have blogs themselves, and who have identified themselves by their real names. People like Wendy and Joey and Maria and Dave and Tim Bray. And because they have outed themselves, so to speak, I am very careful what I write about them.

My non-blogging friends, like Sparky, and Magda, and Zee, and Boz, and Angela, and Lulu, and The Viking, are the ones who get the best stories, because you, Gentle Reader in Australia, and France, and Germany, and Vancouver, and Iowa, don't know who they "really" are, and there's almost no chance of you ever running into them. Even if you did, you probably wouldn't care.

I think of the stories that I write as fiction. All fiction writers, especially in their early works, base their characters on people they know in real life, and include incidents that actually happened to them. And they are free, because what they write is declared to be fiction, to exaggerate some details, and omit others. Because what they're writing is not a diary.

(I have a diary. It's my Moleskine. In it, I write the stories that are too painful, too personal, or too embarassing to others who may be mentioned in them, to be published here.)

And then one day, after I'd been blogging for a few months, I had a technical problem with my blog, and I called on my real-life friend, Tim Bray, for help. He had to look at my template. He had to look at my blog. Once the technical issue had been resolved, he said he'd like to link to my blog from his blog, and did I mind? I knew Tim had a blog and that most of his readers were propeller-heads who are intrested in discussing the latest develoments in Atom and RSS and assorted widgetry. I didn't know what my blog anecdotes had to do with any of that, so I said, "Sure."

So Tim linked to me, and a funny thing happened. Some of those propeller-heads liked my blog. Perhaps it's because they recognized my inner dorkiness, or perhaps it's because they, too, like karaoke. Whatever the reason, suddenly I had readers. Lots of them.

And they started sending me email.

I didn't allow comments on my blog for a long, long time. Not because I didn't want to hear from such readers as might happen along — my email address has always been in my sidebar, along with a note encouraging email — but because, when I'd write a story like this, I didn't see the point in having fifty people write that they're sorry my cat died.

I apologize if that sounds unkind. But when my cat died, I sought sympathy from my real world friends and relatives; I didn't need it from my readers. And comments of that sort are, well, not interesting. To other readers, I mean.

And when I'd write a story like this, I really didn't want to hear comments about what a fool I am to put up with Jack.

See, it doesn't take much thought or effort to post a comment on a blog. It takes a little more thought and effort, plus the willingness to identify one's self, to send someone an email. And so I enjoyed very much the many lovely emails I received from my early readers, long before I ever turned the comments on. Readers like Udge, and Blundering American, and Norm, and Tim Bray. Tim has never written a comment on my blog, but he I know that he reads it. On the day that I posted this story, I had an email from him within minutes, saying, simply, "Tell me." And I did.

My first comments were not, technically, comments, but email messages. Like this one, from Neil Kramer: "I just was sneaking around your site, looking around. What great stories you have. I even saw your photo and karaoke page! But what really got my notice was your mention of Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. That has a special spot on my bookcase, next to the Bible and Curious George."

Sadly, the earliest email messages I received from wonderful readers like Carrington Vanston and Norm Walsh, were sent to my Yahoo! address. I haven't used it for almost two years, and when I tried to log in today, to retrieve those messages, I found that my account had been deactivated, and though I was able to reactivate it, my folders had been deleted.

I remember an email from Evan that said, "I never read personal blogs but I like yours." That was the first time I'd ever heard my blog referred to as a "personal blog." I still don't think of it as that. And I remember an email from Prudence in Paris who wrote to tell me that I have a growing fan base in France. Perhaps it is because they get PoMo there.

So, on this day of the giving of thanks to the First Commenter, I must begin by thanking Tim, Neil, Carrington, Norm, Evan, and Prudence, for sending me those early email messages that contained comments about my blog. Tim was definitely the first. The others came not long afterwards; I don't remember in what order.

Somewhere along the way I turned on the comments. First, as an experiment. Then, occasionally. Now, I only turn them off very infrequently. I don't remember exactly when it was (and I've spent the better part of an hour trying to find it), but I do remember that it was Udge, who had by then become a regular reader, who wrote about the joys of comments, and who first encouraged me to try them. I would turn them on occasionally, when I really wanted my readers' advice. Like here.

Therefore, on this day of the giving of thanks to the First Commenter, I must offer a very special thanks to Udge.

Who is my real First Commenter? If you don't count my Aunt Josephine (and I don't, because she's my aunt), it was Murky Thoughts, who left a wonderfully ironic comment on my blog on February 22, 2005, on the post titled "Please Mr. Postman," in which I explained why I don't allow comments.

Postmodernism is all about irony, Gentle Reader.

Finally, on the subject of comments, I'm sorry to have to tell you, my regular wonderful commenters, that I recently felt forced to turned on the comment moderation feature. This was largely, though not entirely, due to the comments being left with increasing frequency by a woman named Cynthia, in Massachussetts. For reasons that utterly baffle my understanding, she feels it necessary to write hateful, rude, ignorant comments on my blog. I don't know who she is, and I can't for the life of me imagine why she thinks I care what she has to say. And she always comments anonymously, with no email address, as the cowardly do, so I can't reply to her and politely ask her to fuck off. The fact that I receive email notifications every time she leaves a comment, and so can and do delete them immediately, is obviously a concept not within reach of her tiny brain. And though there is a certain amusement factor in reading comments from morons, lately I've decided it's just too bothersome.

So now, two years and a bit into my blogging life, I choose to allow comments on most of my stories, because you have taught me, those of you who read me and who leave comments, that Udge was right. For the most part. And the comments moderation feature allows me to screen assholes like Cynthia without, I hope, causing too much of an inconvenience to you, Gentle Reader.

Today's post began as a salute to my First Commenter. But it is also a salute to all of you; those who lurk, and those who comment; those who blog, and those who do not. And like it says over there in the sidebar, it continues to astonish and delight me that anyone is reading my stories.

In the next story, Postmodern Sass bakes a pie.