This post is for Alex Cavanaugh’s Insecure Writers Support Group (click the link for details on what that means and how to join. You will also find a list of bloggers signed up to the challenge that are worth checking out. The first Wednesday of every month, we all post our thoughts, fears or words of encouragement for fellow writers.
This month’s question — Blogging is often more than just sharing stories. It’s often the start of special friendships and relationships. Have you made any friends through the blogosphere?
Hooboy, this is so true. I often talk about my blogging friends as though they were real people (ha! Of course they are!). I learn a lot from their experiences–history, emotions, even about life. I exult over their successes and worry if I don’t hear from them for a while. I’m always happy when one of them warns me s/he will be away for a while because then I don’t worry so much. I love reading how two people who met through the blogosphere then met up in person–or the reverse. ‘Meeting people online’ has grown up a lot since the day I warned my kids to stay away from strangers on the internet!
I guess most important: When I step on toes in my real world and feel alone, I have you-all. Thank you.
How about you?
#iwsg #amwriting
@TheIWSG
More on #IWSG
Jacqui Murray is the author of the popular Building a Midshipman, the story of her daughter’s journey from high school to United States Naval Academy, the Man vs. Nature saga, and the Rowe-Delamagente thrillers. She is also the author/editor of over a hundred books on integrating tech into education, adjunct professor of technology in education, blog webmaster, an Amazon Vine Voice, a columnist for NEA Today, and a freelance journalist on tech ed topics. Look for her next prehistoric fiction, Laws of Nature, Summer 2021.
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I might even suggest that growing comfortable with making “virtual friends” via WordPress over the past six years has helped make this past year of social isolation far less lonely, less isolated; I already knew firsthand, after all, meaningful relationships could exist in the digital realm.
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That’s true. It’s not like the early days on online meetings where we worried about the person’s intent. We’ve grown past that!
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Blogging friends are a real thing. I especially love reading blog posts where bloggers collaborate or catch up for a day out in real life. The community here is such a great community. I love my blog friends and they are always so down to earth. Glad to have met you on here, Jacqui 🙂
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As I go through people’s posts and read the comments, I recognize so many names! That’s what you’re saying, Mabel–the blogging community is a real thing!
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Yes! I do that too, going through someone’s posts and when I recognise other bloggers in the comments, I get so excited 😂 Everyone is so nice here 😊
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It’s a good thing my blogging friends are real people — otherwise only talking to them and my characters might be cause for concern 😉
Ronel visiting for IWSG day The Great Pretender
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Or not. Who knows!
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I love your little vignette about blogging friends here, Jacqui, and couldn’t agree more. Like many others, I never thought much about community when I started – and continued – to blog. What a wonderful side-effect that has been. I’ve made many, many friends via our blogs and met about ten in real life so far. It’s been an enrichment. I hope to meet you one day as well!!
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I’m impressed that you’ve met so many blogging friends in real life. That is wonderful.
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Sometimes, when I’m having a down day, I’ll post something on my blog so that I can cheer up through the happy interaction with my blog buds. 🙂
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Oooh I like that. It does work, doesn’t it? It’s like we-all know when one of us needs some positive words.
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You’re wonderful, Jacqui! See? Like that. 🙂
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That felt good…
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🙂 🙂
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It’s been a pleasure getting to know so many from many different countries and backgrounds. It still fascinates me that I can send out/ or read a blog written by someone as distant as South Africa, in a matter of moments after the post has been published. On a wintry day, here in Canada, I get treated to photos of sunshine and beautiful flowers, or travel to exotic places vicariously. And yes, I feel that friendships have been formed, even though we’ve never met and probably never will, in real life. It’s been a pleasure getting to know you, as well, Jacqui. 🙂
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It is an amazing virtual world, innit. I am sold on it.
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Me too.
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My blogging friends are my sanity. In fact, I have deeper relationships with friends met online than the ones in my real living world. I think we can form deeper relationships with people we meet online because we get a chance to know them better before we become friends. When we meet people randomly, we don’t always know what else there is to know until we’re knee-deep in it. We gravitate online to like-minded people. If I told you zero of the people in my life even like reading books would that stun you? It sure stunned me.
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That’s pretty funny–about your real-life folks who aren’t into reading. I believe my world is similar, save my kids. I love hanging out with folks who love reading.
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Yes, and you too? I find it stunning to be surrounded by people who don’t read books. It says a lot.
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I also love my blogging friends, Jacqui, and I spend a few hours a day blogging. I also miss people if they go away or are ill. I have never felt that at ease or at home with people in social situations, largely because my interests tend to be things that people I work with, or befriend through the school, have different hobbies and ways of spending leisure time to me. I spend my time reading, writing, working and blogging [outside family time of course]. Most people I know spend their time differently so we don’t have much in common or much to chat about.
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It is a commitment, isn’t it, but so are real world friends. I don’t begrudge any time I spend blogging!
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I enjoy reading blogs, I learn so much about writing, books, and people’s lives.
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Meeting new friends is one of the best parts about blogging 🙂
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Kindred spirits–so true. Otherwise, I don’t meet many authors.
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Hey, my best friend met the woman he eventually married through an online chat group, so there’s something to be said about the support you can get online.
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I need the name of the chat group. Both my kids are still single!
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I agree with all that you wrote, Jacqui! Receiving a direct message from a reader when I haven’t been around for awhile shows how much the blogging community friendships care about each other.
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It does. I’ve read a lot of posts on this topic and have yet to read one that disagreed.
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Insecure ? Me ? Even the idea of blogging was scary.. Blogging friends have made the past year bearable. (almost)
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I wanted to visit your blog but your gravatar doesn’t go to it. Could you post your link?
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Thank you for sharing!!.. “Life gives us brief moments with another, but sometimes in those brief moments we get memories that last a lifetime, So live that your memories will be part of your happiness.” (Author Unknown)…. 🙂
Until we meet again..
May the dreams you hold dearest
Be those which come true
May the kindness you spread
Keep returning to you
(Irish Saying)
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My husby is all Irish so I will share that saying with him.
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You’ve made such a valid point about wondering where our online friends disappear to when they haven’t blogged for some time and the worry – are they alright, since the blog is often the only point of contact.
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Yes! It becomes like an extended family. I’ve been known to search out their other social media to see if they’re active there.
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I just wrote about this recently. Like many others, I consider many bloggers my friends. It’s a unique relationship formed with people we often have something in common with. Like you, I notice people’s absences when they’re not around and wonder if everything is going okay. I think it’s great when people Zoom or meet up. I haven’t done that yet, but I would, given the right circumstances.
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Virtual meetings–Zooms–lack the scents, peripheral vision, and other nuances of in-person but they’re a worthy replacement until this is all behind us.
BTW–I get my vaccine today. I am so excited!
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I’ve made lifelong friends through blogging and even visited some of them and hosted others at our home.
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I love hearing that.
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I’ve made a lot of friends via the blog, and for someone who doesn’t have a lot of friends (by choice), it’s nice to have a good group who share my same interests, and ‘have my back’. I feel closer to my blogofriends than the few RL friends I have. Great post – sometimes it needs to be acknowledged, this weird and wonderful community of ours 🙂
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Oooh, I like RL–I will steal it if I remember to! Yes, me too and me too. I’d like to be a tough woman in Lucy’s time (my main character).
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I like your “hooboy”! 😀 We are lucky to be part of such a supportive group.
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Yeah, we are! I have a few others like that I’ve even included in my fiction. Do you remember, “Katy bar the door!”
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I talk with m blogging friends more often than any of my friends in the neighborhood, Jacqui. I get to know many blogging friends very well throughout the years. This is a real community to me. 🙂
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I have yet to read a post answering this question that doesn’t say something along those lines, Miriam. Most of us tried it out for marketing and stayed for the camaraderie.
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Blogging is a neat community. I have met in person a number of bloggers–including two in Asia–and have grieved over the deaths of a number of bloggers.
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It takes time but what good friendship doesn’t, don’t you think?
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What a wonderful reflection on where the online world has grown. I’m still apprehensive sometimes, but that’s the nature of me working in PR 🙂
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And you should stay that way! It’s wise in the physical world, too, to be cautious. This isn’t our grandmother’s world.
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Grateful… ❤
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That one word does say it all, Bette.
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Well said, friend:)
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It’s not at all what I expected, and my posts have changed a lot since the beginning. I used to get into politics–hooboy, not anymore!
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Heh, on the politics.
I love your posts. They are always so helpful, especially for techie challenged writers:)
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My blogging friends have enriched my life more than I can ever say. Thank you all!!
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I like it when we all join in to help someone’s book launch or contest entry–that sort. It’s hard to make that happen in the RW.
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You’re right about that!
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What a great post in which to reflect on our blogging buddies, Jacqui! I believe writers and those who self-publish really reach out to their blog friends for advice, help, and encouragement. Writing is so personal that friendships easily develop as we get to know each others’ talents and share in their successes. And the best thing is to be able to meet in person when appropriate!
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Some of my most thoughtful posts are from Alex’s #IWSG. I don’t know how he comes up with these topics but they’re great.
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I so agree, Jacqui. My blog buds are just as read as anyone I get together with in person, and in some ways even more so. I have friends in town that I haven’t visited with in a year (since the covid). I wouldn’t have blogged for this many years without you all. You keep me coming back. 🙂
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Ditto. And COVID has really made that all-the-more-apparent.
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Happy IWSG Day, Jacqui! My blogosphere friends are every bit as real to me as my physical friends. Physical friends sounds a little weird. I’m going to adopt Darlene’s “in-person” friends. I think my IWSG friends get me more than many of my in-person friends because they’re writers, and they understand my strange compulsions to write, blog, review books, and other such things. You are amazing, and I appreciate the friendship you have extended to me!
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I love your post on this topic, Louise. Mine is so quick. Yours is engrossing. I encourage everyone to go over and read it:
http://selkiegrey4.blogspot.com/2021/02/iwsg-wednesday-february-3-2021-flashy.html
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You are such an affirming person, Jacqui. I’ve been reading through your recent posts and wondering how you keep up with it all. Do you eat a lot of spinach? Does anyone remember Popeye? LOL I enjoyed your interview with Liesbet. And I loved “Plunge.” Just finished it on Tuesday in the wee hours. Now I’m reading “The Reckoning” by Robert J. Thomas (Thanks to you). How can anyone write 102 novels since 2002? I’m enjoying it a lot ~ nice break after Obama’s “A Promised Land.” Easier on the brain. Hugs to you, my friend!
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I’ve had a blog for a long time now – 9 years but the concept of having blogging friends is new to me. I am shy and interverted so I don’t reach out much but I’m trying to do so more now.
It has been fun sharing my blog on blog hops and trying to follow other blogs. I’m not very consistent, though.
Still I have made a few friends through blogging. When we were stuck in Key West on our boat (everyone says what fun being stuck in Key West but when you are on a boat a mile out, the dinghy ride to shore is always wet, your computer breaks, you husband is injured, ect it’s not so fun) a blog reader let us know he was in Key West too and offered us a ride to the grocery store. He has been a friend ever since.
And of course there are my friends Ellen and Liesbet – writers and sailors I both met through their blogs. And maybe someday I will meet you!
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Bloggers are amazing. I have met only a very few in person and always, it’s been wonderful. To this day, I remain friends with them. One just joined the #IWSG bloghop!
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It is like having a big circle of penpals, and yes, I do worry when one of my online friends disappears for too long! Happy IWSG day.
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I love that — penpals. I never had one growing up. Now I have a passel of them!
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I love and value the friends (like you!) that I’ve meant on this blogging journey ❤
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Ditto, Jacquie. It takes a while to stay on top of the community and is worth every minute.
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So happy to be part of IWSG where we have met. It is hard to fathom how we care about each other, but have never met in person! Amazing and wonderful.
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It’s amazing how much you get to know a person just from posts and comments. Love it.
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This is so true. Blogging has expanded my circle to other countries, places I’ll never get to travel to. Makes the world smaller and more friendly.:-)
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You really got my attention with your last post, The Nonagenarian Novelist. Yeah. That spoke to me.
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Blogging friends sound like new family Jacqui. They are very close to my heart, as I know them better than real life friends and yes, I have made many such friends… the list keeps growing.
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I’m amazed how many of us say the same thing–that we know these bloggers better and feel closer to them than real-world people. Who could have predicted that.
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👍🤗❤️
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A big part of why I blog is to have a sense of community and to have a place to tell the jokes my wife has heard 100 times …
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Do quilters blog? Or engineers? Or is it mostly us writers?
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Mostly writers, but lots of quilters have blogs or vlogs or youtube channels. Engineers do have blogs, but they use interesting grammatical constructs…
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I don’t know where I’d be with my blog, blogging, and blogging friends. I am grateful for every one of them.
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I second that, Chrys. I not only find lots of support from you-all but some great reads!
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Exactly, Jacqui. I’ll be talking with a family member, or a friend on the phone, and say “Oh yes, my friend (fill in the blank, like “Jacqui”) did that last year. She read over 100 books.” And then my family member/friend will ask “Jacqui? Who’s Jacqui? She live near you?” And I explain she’s a blogging friend who I’ve never met and in all likelihood never will, and yet, we know each other well. Those who aren’t bloggers? Well, they just don’t get it. My world has expanded tenfold because of blogging.
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You made me laugh, Pam. I do that, too. Our community is well past the point of ‘stranger danger’. Now, I feel as good about us-all as I would any new acquaintance in the physical world.
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🥰
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I’m grateful for the wonderful friends I’ve met through blogging. Yes, there are a few predators out there, but it’s like that everywhere and after you weed out the bad ones, you are left with a lovely group of friends with diverse interests and abilities and experiences that are a joy to share.
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Because of the ‘predators’, I watch my stream every day and delete comments that aren’t appropriate. Spam (or Akismet) doesn’t seem to catch all of them!
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I have one who keeps following my blog as fast as I can remove him. Every day, he does it. He has one follower (probably his wife or mother). I don’t know what he hopes to get from my blog. Maybe access to more addresses from my visitors? Anyway, he gets kicked off every day. But most of the rest are great people.
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When I started blogging I never could have imaged how attached I would become to the people I got to know.
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It’s funny, isn’t it? Over time, we find out so much about each other, to like, respect, that syncs with ourselves. I agree, Denise.
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I’m wondering how the blog-o-sphere has altered our evolutionary pattern as social animals. I’ll bet Xhosa would have jumped on the blogger wagon and made darned good use of it. She was one resourceful female.
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I might have to reincarnate her in my next trilogy. Hmm…
Thanks, Lee! We do have a good community, don’t we?
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Yes, for sure. There are some that I’ve known for years now. A great group. 🙂
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It’s nice, innit? We are all driven by a love of writing and don’t (mostly) get distracted by Other Stuff. Love it.
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I’ve made lots of friends through blogging too. And I worry when my friends suddenly stop blogging and don’t tell us why like you do.
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I do too. I remember one who stopped. I worried, posted a few pokes. Finally, her son posted that she had died, about a year later. It hurt, missing her. Thankfully, he told her loyal blogging friends.
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I am so grateful for the blogging friends I have. They are such a special group. There are several I am especially close to and have known for years.
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Agreed, Mae. Besides all the other, I don’t have any idea how to market my books except through this venue. I’m glad it’s here!
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Me, too! 🙂
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No need to warn your kids about most of us – we’re just a bunch a crazy writers.
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That’s the truth–funny, effervescent, open… Did I mention fun?
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Hi. Without the online interactions we have with writers/readers, writing would be a lonely exercise. The interactions are very important.
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They are. I have trouble making decisions so it means a lot when I ask for help (say, on a book cover) and people give me their honest opinions. It takes the stress out of at least one decision that day!
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Beautifully articulated. Plus one. I also find it to be a patient and non-judgmental set. I have connected with ‘real’ people in blogosphere. I look forward to an opportunity when I will meet blogging friends in ‘person.’
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Well, if I ever get to India, I’ll be knocking on your door. Judging by your blog posts, we’d get along pretty well.
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Will look out for your visit, Jacqui 🙂
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I’m in complete agreement. I love my blogging friends. Many I know better than my coworkers or other offline friends. I can’t imagine my life without them.
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I can’t tell you the number of times I tell my husby a funny story from one of you-all. I love it.
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I agree, Jacqui. I love my online friends. I often spend more time with them than I do with my offline friends. I look forward to meeting up with them each week. I’d be lost without them.
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Especially now, right? I pretty much don’t see anyone…
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I know just what you mean. Stay safe!
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Oh, I agree with you about the “strangers online” thing. Many years ago I would never have thought you could become friends with a stranger on line, but I have made so many friends this way now, and some I have had the pleasure of meeting in person. I hope when covid stops ruling our lives I will meet more.
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I may be wrong about online friends but it’s hard to hide when I visit their blogs, read their comments, interact. I recently got a request for a sponsored article from a man named “Smith Jones”. Really? I binned that.
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Gee, can’t understand why that went in the bin 😉
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I so agree, my blogging friends are as important to me as my in-person friends. The support for Sue Vincent is a great example. Hugs, my friend.
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Yes! That has been all over our community. That has to catch the Universe’s ear, don’t you think?
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Hi Jacqui – lots … and one here … it’s a great community – so helpful, so thoughtful, so kind … we’re lucky as there’s always someone around to inspire us … take care everyone – all the best Hilary
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I won’t forget your help with the song-language. I still think about that often.
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