I joined myspace in the fall of 2005 after being practically forced to by some friends. I had never really spent much time on the internet before that, mostly because of a stressful job that had me working at least 50, if not more, hours a week. The last damn thing I wanted to do when I got home was stare at a computer monitor some more.

But I eventually caved to the peer pressure and set up a profile. At first it was so much fun meeting new people, trying to find just the right layout to express my personality… and then I discovered blogs.

Obviously I knew what a blog was, in theory. A blog was an “online diary”. Writing down personal details of my life for random strangers to read? Oh hell no. That was not for me.

But then I started reading one that Jerrad read, which lead to another one and another… until I was subscribed to almost 30 blogs. It was fun for awhile, but after a few months it started to feel like high school. There would be a “blog” that was a very thinly veiled diss of another blogger, and I could not resist trying to figure out who was actually mad at who and why. Then I just got tired of trying to keep track of which side I was supposed to be on, and dumped more than half my subscriptions. I didn’t add any new ones either, except for those of friends – online or real-life.

The blogs who made the cut were those that were consistently funny, entertaining, and well-written. The ones I dumped were either drama queens (or kings), assholes, or just plain boring. But now I’d like to thank the boring bloggers for inspiring me to blog. I can’t tell you how many times I read a blog and thought that first of all, my life was at least as interesting, if not more interesting than theirs, and second of all they had zero ability to tell a story.

In June of 2006 I wrote my first blog about my decision to leave my job as a child welfare caseworker, thinking it would be therapeutic and probably no one would ever read it. Imagine my surprise when it got almost 20 comments within a few hours of posting and then I was on like page 22 of the most popular myspace blogs. Back when the most popular blog list actually meant something, not like now where it’s full of morons who are trying to convince me that God doesn’t exist simply by the sheer volume of their blog comments. Not a compelling argument by the way.

I didn’t write another one for almost a year, and then you couldn’t shut me up. I wrote about everything from shopping for a swimsuit and realizing in horror that I had gained almost 30 pounds, and my eventual loss of said weight, to our struggles to plan and execute the small, intimate wedding that we wanted.

As I grew more and more disillusioned with the myspace blog situation, friends kept telling me how great it was to blog elsewhere, at about the same time other friends were telling me how much better facebook was. I resisted for a while, mostly because I don’t like change. I set up a facebook page and spent the first month thinking how much I hated it and how much more I liked myspace.

But after a while, facebook really began to grow on me. Then after I decided to start blogging here, I realized I had very little reason to even log onto myspace. I only have a handful of friends who are on myspace and not facebook, and they read this blog. So we can communicate that way.

But now I feel kinda like I have to put myself out there and try to make a whole bunch of people like me. When that isn’t my style. My style is more, “this is me, this is what I’m about, if you don’t like it, hit the road.” I’ve never had much interest in being “popular”. Which is good because I never was.

In fact, my graduating class in high school voted me Most Unique. Some would take that as a compliment, but I’ve always taken it as: the tribe has spoken and they said “umm, yeah, you are totally weird and everyone’s always thought so, let’s get your picture for the yearbook”.

And furthermore, pimping a blog is like having a goddamn job, and I already have one of those. I’m tired of signing up for shit and creating profiles and uploading pictures and trying to find blogs to add to my blogroll so I can “network”. And then stressing about why people aren’t adding me to theirs.

I set up a blog network on facebook. I didn’t even know there was such a thing until Allison invited me to join hers. I looked at Jerrad (husband and blog agent extraordinaire) and said, “I don’t need to do this shit, do I?” And of course he said yes which prompted my first hissy fit of the weekend. So I set it all up and sent invitations to all my facebook friends. Of which I had like 10 because I only recently decided to join. I still pretty much hate it. I have no clue how to send you an animal, a plant, a drink, or kick your ass at a quiz.

What do I see on my facebook blog network home page thingiemajigger? A message about it being in beta testing and how it won’t work unless you have 15 “fans”. I yell at the computer, “Bitch I don’t even have 15 friends to send invites too and I have to get them ALL to want to read my blog for this shit to work? Thanks for trampling all over my fucking self-esteem.”

My next and hopefully last hissy fit came when Jerrad forced me to sign up for technorati. Yet another fucking site that wants a “profile”. I am tired of trying to sum who I am in 2-3 sentences. So being the stubborn little shit that I am, I claimed my blog, uploaded a picture (I’m not even sure if it was the “right” one) and logged off. Fuck their “sum up your blog in 250 words or less”.

Meh, forget everything I just said. I’m probably just feeling all whiny because I’m riding the crimson wave right now. But leave me a bunch of comments telling me how much you love me. And if you could sum up my blog in 250 words or less, that’d be great.