Blogging...

I just spent 30 minutes going through some of the blogs that I have bookmarked. It's been a LONG time since I've read any blog that wasn't written by someone I know. Granted, blogs are an easy way to keep up with the lives of distant friends, but the primary reason I started reading blogs was to see what people had to say about specific issues.

I have basically three types of blogs I read: business/career/money/entrepreneurship, frugal/coupon, and personal friend/out-of-the-box pastors.

Ok, I guess that's more complicated than I thought. These are my areas of interest. I like to keep up with the young business world, the people who have new ideas on how to do business, and are young enough to write about it in blog format. These blogs keep me in the loop of corporate america, and what the twenty-somethings are feeling about job prospects. This is a narrow view (consisting only of people able or willing to write), but is still a quick look into the business arena.

More than that, I have a few bookmarked blogs that have great tips on how to save a few dollars. This generally revolves around the food budget, but may include budgeting tips. These include bloggers that make the coupon game easier by matching up coupons with sales at the major market chains, and publishing that information. Or bloggers that give recipe ideas for low cost home-cooked meals.

And even more than that, I enjoy reading up on the few people I know who blog. These are generally snippets of the daily activities of friends that give me a glimpse into their lives. In amongst these are the pastors that blog about being a little left of center when it comes to mainstream religion. Kind of a strange combination, but I like it.

Generally, when I have a few minutes, I catch up on the blogs in the order in which I like them (in other words, from last mentioned to first). So the business blogs rarely make it into my limited timeframe.

I know this is a priority choice, so today I decided to go the other direction. I used the time I had waiting for the kiddies to fall asleep to read some of the business blogs I haven't visited in months.

And you know what? I realized why I started blogging in the first place! I enjoy reading these business perspectives, and they force me to pause and evaluate my own position on ideas that wouldn't otherwise occur to me. Some of them are political commentary, some just state a position on whatever major issue is going on in D.C. Some are money ideas, investment tips, savings ideas, etc. And I realized that that is what I had intended for my blog. To be a means of sorting out my opinions and ideas, and putting them out there to invite comment.

Being in this field, I often feel starved for intelligent conversation. I usually don't realize it until I've had an intelligent conversation with someone about some debatable issue. Then I realize what I miss the most about working in an office filled with other professionals. Somewhere in the building there is likely to be an intelligent person that enjoys debate, and can help define/articulate ideas that otherwise are general or vague impressions.

I think I had the thought that over time, the process of writing would further refine my interests into a specific area of "expertise." However, that has not been the case. If anything, I'm now interested in even MORE diverse topics than I was when I started this.

Either way, it was great to spend just a little bit of time in the blogosphere and remember what I liked about it!