blogging circle

I was at the park last week sitting on the bench with another mom as we watched our kids run and climb around the place and I had this overwhelming desire to ask her if she blogged. That maybe somehow we had passed each other in the blogosphere, maybe clicking on someone's blogroll and ending up, if only briefly, at each other's website. And then we could say, oh yeah! You did look sort of familiar.

Is that odd? I never did ask her, although we struck up a very small conversation.

It's really possible she does have a blog. It's really possible she doesn't. And if she does blog, it's possible we blog in entirely different communities. I've noticed that there are certain pockets of bloggers. Some form a community based on similar interests and writing styles. Some of them are just a continuation of the circle of friends they already have and they all comment on each other's blogs instead of that extra telephone call. There are the super-bloggers that everybody seems to know. Although I've also noticed these super-bloggers usually operate in one community or another.

So I've been thinking: what blogging circle am I in? Am I in a circle? Maybe I just sort of float out there in cyberspace somewhere, picking up random readers here and there.

I have never really blogged in a "friend" circle. I mean, some of my friends know I blog, and some of my friends read my blog, and I suspect that through them, there I more people I know that read my blog, but I don't know that they read my blog. Got that? Yikes. As far as I know my neighbors don't know that I blog, and if they do, they haven't said anything. (Hello, neighbors! are you there?) Then there are the instances of people from my past making random appearances and that's always fun, and funny.

A lot of my comments come from people I do consider friends, though most of them I've never met in person. I kind of like that. I like that I started this little blog sans community and that somehow someone started reading my blog, and I started reading their blog and then we were friends. I like the acquaintances, the people who pop up occasionally and randomly with something nice and/or pertinent to say. I like that there are people all over the world who show up here from time to time.

If you do show up here, thanks. You might read my blog, and I might read your blog, and perhaps we've passed each other in the airport or the grocery story and didn't even know it! We might have said hello. So if some woman asks you one day in the park, "Do you blog?" it just might be me.