blogsavannah.com

Wow! There are going to be over 100 Savannah bloggers sitting together
in one room? All that energy could be combustible, dontchay’all think?
Has anyone checked to make sure Armstrong Center is prepared in case our
discussions explode into a mushroom cloud of obscure adjectives and
grits?

I’m just concerned ’cause I’ve never been to a blogging conference
before. Sure, I’ve met a peer here and there, one on one, but attending a convention of a
bunch of opinionated people used to the sound of one clapping in their
heads could be raucous.

My blog’s been around for almost four years, which I guess makes me an
old lady. When I began blogging at yoyenta.com in 2004, I understood the
very nature of blogging to be solitary - in the physical sense, at
least. I had already built a freelance writing career sitting around in
my underpants and a ripped t-shirt, so this wasn’t a problem. But in
spite of my misanthropic intentions, relationships have been built -
some of them with people who like what I write, some who think I’m a
jerk and a dork because I basically learned blogging etiquette by
receiving threatening emails from webmasters (note to newbies: ripping
pictures off other sites is called stealing bandwidth and it makes
people cranky. Also, leaving your web address in other people’s comment
sections without actually commenting is a big no-no.) Some of these
blogfriendships are older than my daughter, and I keep up with folks
I’ve never met and never will. I like that just fine.

A blogging colleague likes to make a big deal out of the fact that I am
a paid blogger, as I was hired by a web site to provide content based on
my previous work as opposed to starting on my own. This is fabulous, of
course, even more so since I suspect the people who pay me don’t
actually read it. But paid or not, the urge to post comes almost every
day, even it means staying up past my bedtime or ignoring the laundry
pile - even when I’m too busy to post or am fresh outta ideas, there’s
an itch to return to it that borders on a nicotine fit (And I would know
- I’ve been having a nic fit since October 2005.) And now that I keep
another blog as part of my job,
it’s a challenge to make time for the real people in my life - I know
you know what I’m talking about, blogger.

Blogging is about building community without actually having to be
present - a revolutionary idea that is our most powerful weapon against
those who would prefer to keep the masses ignorant of each other. If we
all start meeting up and looking into each other’s faces and absorbing
each other’s auras and sh*t, the world might spin off its axis.

Which sounds awesome. So I look forward to meeting y’all in person. And
I promise to wear pants.

Jessica Leigh Lebos
savannah.skirt.com/blog/740
yoyenta.com