My Pet Blog

So now you know how it was with my cats. Gerbil stories will wait for another day.

After Alex died I sometimes looked at the cement step he was buried under and contemplated my status as an incipient empty nester - if the creek don't rise, my son will go to college this fall and I'll be here alone. I thought, I could get another animal, but what if I were to start talking to a pet?

Since I already talk to myself sometimes, even in the grocery store, this seemed ikkily plausible.

I had promised my kids I would try not to become more eccentric than I am already. Therefore, instead of becoming a pet nut, I decided to get a blog.

Pratie Place is my pet blog. I feed it every day. I'm glad to see it in the morning and I prepare its breakfast every night.

Guess you could say I talk to my blog, but the nice thing is, unlike dogs and cats, my blog talks back, with the voices of real and interesting people who come to visit.

For a while, "traffic" and "links" were worrying me, but I've fixed this the same way I deal with too much world news: I don't look. I also went cold-turkey on BlogExplosion so I'd know any visitors were coming of their own free will.

Here is an earlier-millennium thought: Are we bloggers re-creating the Victorian custom of visiting? They got in their carriages (browsers), drove through the streets and stopped by the houses (blogs) of people who had stopped by their houses. They left their cards (comments) before they drove on. Later, presumably, the visitees would become the visitors.

For a long time I thought it might be fun to "write" but never felt I had anything of interest to say. Hence my Sonnet Service: a means to get paid for writing poetry without having to slog about with self-expression. It was expression-for-others, perfect for a lurker.

Then a few years ago I took a writing class from a depressed writer who had had a book published to tepid acclaim. She was bitter about the publishing world and the aggressive antics of her competitors, all jockeying for position, and thus convinced me - to give it up.

Wow, a class that persuades people to stop doing what they took the class to start doing! (For singing teachers who teach their students to hate singing, and cooking schools which teach their students to make inedible food, see Evil Institutes).

Discovering the blogging community provided an unexpected second chance. I'm glad you're here! Trying to think of something interesting every day is good for my brain and I hope I can stick with it. So far I haven't missed a day.

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