I decided to blog here because I wanted to write. Like many of you I've written a private journal for years, but it wasn't fulfilling my need to reach out with my words. Maybe someone will read it in the future, maybe not. But what I wanted was someone to read what I'm writing now. Oddly enough I find myself writing here what I rarely did in my private journal - about my family, about my past. There is something very seductive about writing into the void, where random strangers read. Well, maybe not such random strangers because I now have blogfriends, and although these are for the most part still strangers, they are not strangers in the same way that they were when I started out here. I have chosen to invite them as friends, or to respond to their invitations. This is both a delight and a problem. I find I'm devoting a disproportionate amount of time to reading and commenting in their blogs, and yet I can't keep away from them - it's like an addiction. Maybe it is an addiction. I read a lot, I've read the whole of most blogs on my list, although I haven't commented on most of what I've read. Sometimes I just want to read the whole of a blog before commenting, sometimes what I want to say requires some thought, sometimes I don't know what to say, sometimes I get fed up with commenting and not getting a response. I don't expect a response to every comment I make, nor do I respond to all of those made in my blog, because not all of them require it, but I do get frustrated when I ask a question and that goes unanswered. I feel somewhat discouraged when that happens and consequently reluctant to comment more in that person's blog; although I must admit it never stops me from reading more. Maybe they are too busy to respond. After all I suppose the priority here should be to write one's own blog - I keep trying to make that my priority, but I can't resist reading the other ones first - and then what happens is I get caught up in them, and I don't write as much as I would like to in mine.