Next Blog

Blogger has a feature called “Next Blog”.  This feature seems to be solely for the purpose of finding random new blogs to read and “blog-stalk.”  I love this feature. As many of my TV shows are on a holiday vacation, I have been entertaining myself by “Next Blogging”.

I have discovered that many times the blogs begin to follow a pattern. Sometimes I read blog after blog of potty-training, ward party, and ‘it snowed in Rexburg’ stories. Other times I have hit a streak of budding writers, who are sharing their literary genius with the world through blogging – mostly because publishers probably won’t accept it. One time I got on a soccer kick that began with some family blogs about soccer camp and led to a string of blogs from South America about professional soccer players and were written in Spanish. I’ve also seen many photography blogs, artsy-crafty blogs, and medical issue blogs. 

Writing is a form of therapy.  It is a wonderful outlet for me when I am overwhelmed with life’s challenges, and many other people feel the same way.  I have read blogs written by women with infertility, men and women with clinical depression, and quite a few blogs from families who have lost children to diseases such as children’s leukemia. These stories are moving and powerful.  Some of the bloggers are religious and use their blog to bear testimony of their faith (much as I have done, I suppose). Some of the bloggers are looking for answers to life’s big questions and send their queries out into cyberspace in the hopes that a reader will find them and help them.  Some bloggers simply want to vent their anger and frustration to the world at large.

When I “Next Blog” I look for several things on each page. First I look for signs of the writer’s religion. It’s not hard to spot the ward Halloween party pictures, missionary updates, and family history stories from LDS authors. Other religions are trickier for me to figure out because I don’t know what tell tale signs to look for on the blogs. I have found Jewish bloggers, Catholic bloggers, atheist bloggers, and several hippie pot smoking bloggers (that’s kinda like religion, right?) The second thing I look for is a connection with the blogger.  There are trillions of people in this world and millions of them are blogging. “Next Blog” picks random blogs out of the tangled world wide web and once – only once so far- one of the blogs I was randomly reading had a link to a blog written by my sister’s college roommate! What a small world!

What I have learned from this is that I am not alone in the world. None of us are. Sometimes we think that we are the only ones who have ever suffered one particular trial.  This is not true. It doesn’t matter if you live in Bologna, Italy, Calgary, Canada, or rural Twin Falls, Idaho you are not the only person in the world who has ever had food poisoning, got stressed out at work, been lonely, sad, or sick.  Nor are you the only person who has ever been surprised, happy, in love, or successful.  “Next Blog” has taught me that I am but a very small speck in the large microcosm of this universe.  My problems may be big to me, but low and behold they did not change the world in its entirety. Nor am I the first person to write about them. Millions of people are doing that every day. They are allowing us a glimpse of life from their perspective.

There is a very large world out there, just full of people who are sitting in front of their computer screens bearing their souls to the world.  All they need now are readers.  So take a minute and move your mouse up to the top left corner of your screen and click on that “Next Blog” link.  You never know where you will end up. But beware – it can be very addicting.