A lot has been made this past week about bloggers- Mommy Bloggers, male bloggers, making money off of blogs, utilizing your brand. A few articles came out- some with disparaging tones, others with asinine stereotypes, and others that seemed to get that we are all just out here letting our voice be heard.  Of course a slew of blog posts have followed tearing articles, bloggers, and ideas down. It has been a little disheartening, to say the least and it has made me question this community that I’ve worked so hard to be a part of.

At the end of the day we are all just jumping up and down, the proverbial kid begging to picked for the team, only this time we simply want our ideas to be heard. Not all of them are profound- I for one wrote a post from the P-O-V of my dog recently and all my Mother had to say about that was: “Daisy….tsk. I don’t think you should be doing that again any time soon.” It is the virtual tearing down that revs me up the most: the blogs that are set up for the sole purpose of hating on another blogger for some reason or another, the bloggers who make snide, inside comments in their posts about yet another blogger who – gasp- committed the Internet equivalent of wearing white to someone else’s wedding. Sometimes I wonder if I really left my cheerleading uniform in my locker and my sorority letters in a stack of t-shirts, some of the pettiness I see out there in blog land trumps the time my co-cheerleader and best friend stole my boyfriend and claimed she was just trying to help him get me back, – let me tell you ladies & gentlemen- at my high school that was juicy.

I’ve been blogging for a few years now, something I started doing one dreary February day in law school when I just couldn’t take one more minute of res judicata & the Socratic method and suddenly, there I was. Emailing with other Internet People That Might Actually Be 400 Pound Vermont Loggers, debating Blogger versus WordPress and fretting about typos that were solidified on the world wide web for forever. It was easy in the beginning, no one knew who I was and no one left any comments. I was free to vent and to worry and to unleash my thoughts of how very much I hated my law school with its stale air & elevators from the Roosevelt administration. Then more people started reading, I started reading more blogs and I started to see some of the seedy underbelly of it all. I learned what a troll was and how much an anonymous person can cut you to the quick. My Mother started reading and she mentioned this place to my Grandmother and my cousin’s commented on a post I wrote. I got my first truly nasty comments from people who just had to tell me: YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG. (They probably spelled “you’re” wrong, but hey, I’ll let it slide.)

You might wonder why I continue, especially as someone who is so sensitive to witnessing others being insensitive (or, as the case may be with blogging, downright rude and intolerable) and why I still put myself out there for others to judge. My blog doesn’t fit neatly into any particular category, I’m not a Mommy Blogger and I’m not political. I don’t fit into the pert, Southern newlywed group even if I do have the prerequisites including my very own deviled egg plate & silver iced tea spoons. I’m not a health blogger, a fitness blogger and I don’t write enough about the big bad world of being a lawyer to be a bLAWgger either. I just kind of write about things on my mind, sometimes they are stories of my parents childhood(s) and sometimes I poke fun at myself for refusing to learn how to use my Dad’s espresso machine because secretly I’m terrified I might blow it up.

I blog because my friends from law school, the ones still left standing after the massacre we call The Bar Exam & weddings being called off & the worst job market ever in which we all competed for the same 2.3 jobs, are ones whose ties were strengthened through blogging.

I blog because my Mom learned how to text message so she could be the first one to tell me The Pioneer Woman was hosting another contest and I should hurry up and enter it. I blog because my Mom was the first person I called when I actually won a Pioneer Woman contest and she  flew all the way out to my house to see my loot in person.

I blog because my wedding guest list had more than five couples on it that were there due to friendships solidified through blog comments & entries, and at least three people were invited that I met, 100 percent, through blogging.

I blog because when I have a bad day one of the first people I email is my BlogHer’10 roommate, Overflowing Brain, who is so much like me- yet so different- that I can’t help but wonder how grey my life would be without her, even if she does insist that due to her birthday that falls two weeks before mine she is always in charge.

I blog because a reader of mine asked if she could help me with my honeymoon itinerary in Napa Valley and proceeded to call every single winery we were going to & made reservations for us, ensuring that we had one of the most romantic, fantastic honeymoons a couple could ever go on. She didn’t tell me she personally knew someone at every place we went, and we spent an entire week being treated like royalty. She just pulled some favors for a fellow blogging friend.

I blog because the Mommy bloggers like Amalah, Metalia and Moosh in Indy simultaneously make me look forward to being a parent so much I could scream while also reminding me in two paragraphs that we are just not there yet. I blog because Motherhood Uncensored inspired me to finally get to the gym.

I blog because the food bloggers bring warmth and flavor to my dinner table, the law bloggers remind me why I’m a lawyer and the women whose lives couldn’t be more different than my own show me that perhaps my world’s focus is a little too narrow.

I blog because when I found out my Grandmother had cancer my Twitter stream was filled with jokes, prayers, good thoughts & comforting virtual hugs from women who are so different from one another that if they met on a subway train they’d all pull back in horror or disdain, but somehow, on the internet they all let their guard down a little to show their true, human spirit.

Behind the keyboards and the screens, the Macs & the PC’s, behind ads and comments and followers and sponsorships, we are all just people trying to find our soapbox to stand on. And by standing on mine & spewing out what I have to say I’ve enveloped myself in a circle of friends so large, so close knit and so fantastic that I know I can get a reservation at the best restaurant in New York City, a job lead for a friend in California, a hard-to-find pair of shoes that are on a sale and in my size, and comfort and wisdom and laughter with just a few keystrokes.

That my friends, is why I blog.