Guest Post: The Best Thing About Being A Blogger

I am pleased to bring you a guest post from Nikki today.  We are both participating in a blogswap over at 20sb.  Did I luck out or what?  You can check out her blog here.  That is where you can also find myself today.  Enjoy!
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First off, I would like to say thank you so much to Kris for letting me invade her blog for the day. I very much enjoyed reading her posts and getting to know her through this blog swap. I look forward to reading more from her.

I know what you're probably thinking....1) who is this weird chick 2) what is an EVILFLU? 3) what's that smell?

and I will answer those all for you right now, just to get the awkwardness out of the way.

1) My name is Nikki and I blog over at http://www.evilflu.com/. My blog is a little bit of everything, but most of it boils down to the life of my son and I after his father passed away. 2) I really can't answer this question without a whole big long blog post (coming soon!) but I will tell you that it represents a change I went through in my life where I turned into a mean old shrew. 3) That smell is probably Oreos and worms as I do have a six year old who pretty much lives in dirt and chocolate.

I am really here to talk to you today about the best thing about being a blogger.

I began blogging back in 2002 when I was working at a boring office job. I would find myself just writing about anything and everything on my blog, mostly immature things that probably could have ended my boring receptionist career on the spot, but I was lucky and traffic was minimal to that blog. I had very few readers who got chuckles from my workday antics and then there were the "trolls" who said I needed to grow up.

Which is funny because I did end up taking their advice and grew up way too quickly. Soon I found myself blogging about childbirth, diapers, cancer, death, grief, loneliness and anger. Even after going through all of that in such a short period of time, blogging was always there as a place for me to let off my steam. I found myself going through the day pretending to be happy, and nobody knew how much it hurt to attend that wedding or hold that newborn baby. When I came home and blogged about it, there were my virtual friends there to let me know they were there for us.

I could post anything and there would always be someone that came by to offer up some encouraging words, excellent advice or just a shoulder to virtually cry on, even if they were all the way across the world. I mean there were the few jerks who would comment "show us your boobs" but some days even those comments were nice. It showed that someone cared (to see some boobage) even when I thought nobody else did.

There really is nothing better than being able to blog about your passions and have somebody be interested to read about them. The difference between telling my stories in person versus on my blog would be the fact that I am a "shy storyteller". I am usually uncomfortable when I make eye contact with someone, when they seem so intensely interested in what I have to say it makes me rush through everything I have to say. I usually end up forgetting the best part of the story and it is gone and forgotten shortly afterwards. I love being able to blog about my story instead and having it be in this virtual "book" forever, along with the reactions of the reader - without having to make awkward eye contact.

So I guess, in a way, I owe my sanity to my blog. To me, the best thing about being a blogger is knowing that someone else is there, encouraging, loving, and caring (about seeing your boobs) and having this space in this virtual world to share my passions - and not my boobs.