Rambling to Self, Part the Second

Where was I?

Ah, yes...so now I had this writer that I loved, but she couldn't write enough for me to spend hours at a time reading. But what's this? A little list in the corner of other funny, smart women writing! Whee! Who cares if I don't have cable?

And so I worked my way through Julia's list. In this way, I became immersed in the world of infertility blogging (so much so that, when we started trying to get pregnant, I was sort of convinced that we wouldn't be able to, just because these women with whom I so identified in other ways had struggled to conceive. And then when I did get pregnant right away, I felt like a traitor. Which is kind of insane, because...well, they don't know me, they don't care, even if they did, yadda yadda insanecakes). My husband would walk by and wonder, "Why are you reading about infertility? We're not even trying yet." And I tried to explain, it's not the topic, it's the writer. I would read these women writing about infertility, parenting, car repair, Middle Eastern politics, Dadaist art, library fees, honeybee mating habits...a good writer, to me, can make any topic interesting.

Then, by nature of the evolution of the bloggers' lives and by following more links, I started reading parenting blogs. But, of course, calling it a "parenting" blog is generally a vast oversimplification: these women wrote about their lives, and their kids were (and, um, hopefully still are) part of that.

So I come back to: do I need a niche? Does that make it easier for readers to identify with you? Or for other bloggers to connect to you? I do envy and covet membership in some of the wonderful communties of bloggers that I read about, but am floundering at the idea of trying to figure out exactly where I belong. I will certainly write about parenting. But I'm also a special ed teacher and feel passionately about that. More specifically, I work with preschoolers with social and emotional issues and I want to compare notes and share resources. I am the daughter of a woman who died of cancer and am now mothering without my mother. I want to connect with other people who are doing the same thing. I am writing just for the sake of writing, and want to hear from people who are doing that. So can I be this spread out and still find the community I seek? Is there an online network of blogging schizophrenics?

Hm. So much for getting a few more days out of this topic. Tomorrow, knock-knock jokes!