i've unleashed another blogger into the world

Yesterday, a sexologist-turned-minister came to the office to discuss the relationship between sexuality and religion. I could write a whole post on that but I just had to tell you about what she said towards the end of her presentation.

She informed us that she now has a blog and that she thinks blogging is fascinating (I’d add a link, but you’ll see why I didn’t in a second). I turned a little red at this point because the two people in the office who know that I blog looked at me when she said this. The Reverend went on to say that she writes about the topic of sexuality and how it relates to religion almost daily. “It’s fun and easy,” she said, “especially when I’m angry. I just blow off some steam on the blog and let it go.” Then she said, “The challenge is to get people to read your blog” (yeah, tell me about it). According to her, the key to getting people to read your blog is to read other blogs and make comments. However, the Reverend does not have the time to read other people’s blogs, let alone comment. So in order to get her name/blog out there, she has hired a summer intern who gets paid $2 per comment. The intern is already a blog reader, so she reads other people’s blogs and then places comments under the Reverend’s name.

First of all, you really shouldn’t blog and expect people to read your blog unless you have the time to read other people’s blogs. It’s the Golden Rule of Blogging. How can you expect to be read if you don’t read blogs? It just doesn’t make sense to me. Please correct me if I’m wrong, but I think the reason why the DC Blogging community is awesome is because we all read each other. For the most part, we’re all connected through dcblogs.com, which is fabulous. This is not my attempt to be on DC Blogs noted. The site is truly freakin’ fabulous and I’ve been exposed to so many other blogs that I would’ve never thought to read (or it would’ve taken me a long time to find) had it not been for that site.

The Reverend then begins to field questions from the staff on how to start a blog and whether it’s free and if you could be anonymous (she recommended Blogger which is free and allows for anonymity). Again, I get looks from my coworkers who know I blog. I really just want to laugh. Blogging has been around for awhile now. It’s odd to me that some of my coworkers are just catching on.

One of my coworkers (who knows) came up to me afterwards and asked me how it is that I keep up with reading other blogs (apparently the Reverend made it sound like it was SO difficult to fit in to her busy schedule). Jeff chimed in, “Who has time to read blogs? People are just too busy.” Offended, I respond, “Well, some I’ve bookmarked and others I’ve added to Google Reader.” I gave my coworker a quick demo (Google Reader is your friend) and then she concluded, “I’m gonna start a blog. If Liz can do it, then so can I.”

Holy crap. Did I just inspire someone else to blog? Who knew I had any such influence?