Blogging and Its Effects

Are you a blogger?  Have you thought about the positive and/or negative effects that it's had on your life?  I guess I've never just sat down and thought about it.

This little meme has been floating around the community this week, and I thought I would sit down and put into words how blogging has affected me.

Here are the rules:
1. Write about 5 specific ways blogging has affected you, either positively or negatively.
2. link back to the person who tagged you
3. link back to this parent post
4. tag a few friends or five, or none at all
5. post these rules— or just have fun breaking them

1. Postitive:  My blog has provided an outlet that I had been in search of for years.  I have enjoyed creating freebie web sites in the past, learning html, and have wanted to have my own site to be able to communicate anything and everything I want to say about whatever my favorite thing of the day is.  Finally, I found the blog to be exactly what I was looking for.
2. Positive:  I've found sisters in Christ in the blog community, people like Ronnica (Tale of a Kansas Girl), Amanda (OhAmanda), Lisa (Simply His), Amy Beth(Ministry So Fabulous) and Melanie (Big Mama), just to name a few.  The things they write about make me think, encourage me, and definitely entertain.  Some make me laugh out loud!  I do enjoy knowing that when I log on to the internet first thing in the morning, I'm going to have something interesting to read.
3. Positive:  Blogging helps me work on my writing.  I used to write so much more when I was in high school and college.  I kept journals, as well as worked at creative writing for my English classes.  Once I left the classroom environment, writing took a backseat to... well... life.  Now I have opportunity to turn things around and write about life, and sometimes that helps bring perspective when things seem a little cloudy.
4. Negative:  I'm a little too concerned with my popularity now that I blog.  I compare the number of comments I get to my blog friends' numbers, and I feel like I'm on the bottom of the pile.  Then my thoughts go to wondering whether there's any point to this whole blogging thing or not.  My site meter really bums me out most of the time.   I want to make people laugh, and I also want to influence them for God.  I feel like I'm not succeeding when I look at the numbers.  This is a negative effect because I obviously lose my focus on what's really important in life.
5. Negative:  Last but not least, my thoughts through the day tend to drift to blogs frequently - writing my own and reading my favorites.  Maybe more than they should.  Of course, if you've noticed how sporadic my posting is, you can tell how much of that thinking actually comes to fruition by way of writing.  (Not much)  This is also a negative in that I'm easily distracted from things I should be doing... like making dinner or doing housework.

So there you have it, the positive and negative effects that blogging has on my life.  Since I found this topic at Tale of a Kansas Girl, you can go over now and read what Ronnica's thoughts are on this.  I won't be tagging anyone, but feel free to use this meme if you like.