When I began a blog I realized it would be very easy to be someone I’m not, or to at least sugar-coat my life. For example, it would have been easy to make it look like I am completely together all of the time, effortlessly gliding from one project to another, as I smile at my compliant children. It’s too easy to laugh at all the difficult moments I have, and I don’t remember how much I’ve shared, so I hope I’ve never given that impression. [I am an organized person who uses organization to free up time in life to actually live, but I am not married to it.]

Then I read or heard something recently which made me see blog identity in a different light. Our blog is a unique place because we can’t be pre-judged here. Strangers cannot bump into our blog with preconceived notions of who we already are. As long as we’re honest, the basic facts of our lives will be the first thing a person runs into.

Furthermore, we get to choose what those basic facts about us are going to be. We decide what we are going to disclose. I would guess that most reasonable honest folks are sharing up front what they most want to be known for at first glance.

So many of us include our relationship with God, the number of our children, and then perhaps a few other things, like where we live, maybe some educational & experiential background, etc., the choices are endless.

We are given the opportunity through our blogs to create the most important side of ourselves to share with others. That is, to me, one thing which makes a blog so…fascinating. I am visiting a page which a person has created to introduce their self to me.  Even though our homeschoolblogger community focuses primarily on homeschooling, I think the effect is the same.

I am meeting someone who shares these things with me before we walk into a room and all of my first-impression sensors go to work. I get to meet someone based on their values up front right away, and then I get to read their writing, a sure introduction to a person’s mind, soul and strength.

So in this way, I think blogs are a very individual way to meet someone. I think all this has something to do with the love of blogging. If you like people, you are going to love blogs, and vice-versa.

All of the above presumes I am visiting honest bloggers: at homeschoolblogger, and at sites that take place because of this site, I am not worried about falsity.