Thank Blogger for that

So Edge set us all homework on how we got started in blogging. And of course I'm tardy with my homework. Nothing much has changed in 40 years.

I was an early adopter as far as internet things are concerned. I first came across the internet in 1995 and put up my first business web site later that year. Mosaic and Cello were the main browsers of the day. And for the last five years I've been more or less totally dependent on the internet for my income.

So, fast forward to last year. My wife had a blog. Other people in her church had blogs. But I'd never even read a blog. I knew what a blog was but I suddenly realised that I was way behind. Hey, that's not like me. I'm usually at the cutting edge. Although to be honest I'm probably behind with a lot of internet stuff these days.

So in November last year I decided to start a blog. I logged in to Blogger. I had no idea what I would write about. When it came to giving the blog a title I was stumped. I didn't have a clue what to call it, so I called it something like "Ramblings of a Middle Aged Man" or something equally lame.

So there you are, you've created this blog and you're confronted with that big box thing that you type in. So what do you say? Clueless again.

Then an idea came to me. I'd read an article in the newspaper the day before about the sleep patterns of couples in bed and they'd used the word Bediquette. Well, that was a subject close to my heart so I wrote about that. And that was my first post. I'll always have a soft spot for that one.

Now at this stage I hadn't read any blogs other than my wife's and I figured that maybe I had better read some. So I started hitting the Next Blog button in Blogger and trawled through the teenage kids' blogs with their weird texting language and the foreign language blogs and the plain boring ones until I came across a blog by an American woman. She was something called an SAHM (that meant nothing to me at the time) and she was funny, witty, crazy, and sexy in a weird sort of way. She was called Michelle and her blog was called Chicken Flicken. One thing that struck me was her saying how much she loved her husband. Which is kind of ironic because she ended up being separated from her husband and shutting her blog down.

But that got me thinking of my own marriage and I came up with the idea of calling it "A Perfect Marriage", along with the tag line, "OK, so nothing is perfect, but it comes pretty damned close".

So I changed the title in Blogger and that's how it's stayed ever since, even though we're not with Blogger any more.

The Chicken Flicken blog led me to others, like A Taste of the Good Wife. And I thought, hmm...maybe it's OK to talk about sex in these blog things.

The next evening we had some pretty hot sex so I decided to write about that.

I never really intended it to be a sex blog, but if you're writing about something that is important in your life then sex comes pretty high on the list - well it does with me anyway. As Dylan Thomas is supposed to have said, "The only things worth writing about are birth, sex and death." I don't know much about death (yet) and it's been a while since our children were born, so I guess that leaves sex. Although the blog isn't just about sex. It just tends to feature quite a lot.

At first I blogged in secret, but pretty soon I realised that I had to tell my wife about it. She started reading and I think she enjoyed what she read. To come down in the morning and find your wife in front of the computer getting turned on by something you wrote the night before and then having sex right there on the computer chair...well, that's pretty special. And soon she was writing on the blog too (although not enough).

So how did I come to Edge? It was all SN's fault. Actually, I was very wary of Edge to start with - seems laughable now. But like a lot of people I try to remain anonymous on my blog and I had known someone called Edge in school who had gone to live in the US. So before I delurked and started commenting I had to be sure it wasn't him. It wasn't, of course, and I was quickly under his spell.

And now? Well, blogging takes up far too much of my time, no doubt about that. I am making a conscious effort to cut down on the amount of blogging I do. I've tried to keep up the writing, but my reading and commenting have been reduced quite a bit recently. It hasn't interfered with my family life, or my marriage but it does often cut into my work time, and that's not good. I have to make myself concentrate on doing things that actually earn money.

And of course here I am writing this bang in the middle of my work day! Damn, this thing gets addictive, doesn't it?

Still, whilst my work might have taken a bit of a hit from blogging, it's definitely had a positive effect on my marriage. Blogging is a great way for couples to communicate. Like the time I wrote about what I'd like to do for my birthday. I wanted to buy my wife a remote control vibrator and take her to dinner while she was wearing it. Without the blog I'm not sure I would have told her that. And then to actually do it and write about it and share the experience with others was wonderful.

And that's really what draws us to blogging, isn't it? Sharing. The privilege of sharing in the thoughts and experience of others and being able to share our thoughts and experience with others. Sharing intimate thoughts and feelings with my wife has been wonderful, and it's also been wonderful to share with others and have the benefit of their input. We all love those comments, don't we?

So I would say that despite the fact that it takes up too much of my time, blogging has definitely had a positive impact on my life so far.

And I thank all of you out there in blogworld for that.

And where I started and where I came across Edge, and where most of you are... we can all thank Blogger for that.