….runs the Mississippi river.

True.

I have recently subscribed to many, many blogs, and I saw today that what I feared would take up way too much time in order to be a proper blog reader, rather than one of those who bot-like add people and never, ever read what they write, actually takes about an hour, so, that’s entirely doable.

I left a couple of much longer posts on the side to read a little later, but on the whole, it is a perfectly feasible experience.

When you are reading a book, usually a novel, you enter it and, if it’s good, you’re a little sorry to put it down and perhaps carry a bit of it into your dreams, but you will easily slip back into it once you resume it. I love books and I think besides the nature-given animals and human beings and trees and landscapes a book is the greatest most wonderful thing on the planet. If you can combine two or more of the above elements, as far I’m concerned, I’m in heaven (example of perfect happiness = reading a book on the top of a hill near a brook with trees around me and my dog and my children playing nearby, maybe my husband next to me though he’d probably be on his phone complaining about the lack of proper reception so I’d probably leave him at home tbh.) Books are the best.

But, when you are reading 15-30 different blogs a day, you are skipping in and out of entirely varied and different worlds. The treasure is immense. Unmeasurable. You are diving in and out of a person’s soul. Sure they will choose what exactly they are sharing with you. But you see, the blog format pushes people to express themselves way more effectively than any other creative expression.

In a similar way to the “In Vino Veritas” principle, which I believe in profoundly (If I cannot stand you when you’re tipsy you’re probably not a person I want to hang out with when sober), a blog brings out people, you can read between the lines or even just read what they want to say.

I remember since I was little and up to very recently one of my recurring cravings was to know what people talked about when I wasn’t there. There wasn’t, believe it or not, any element of nosiness or minding other people’s business involved. I’m just one of those people who couldn’t care less about your job, your position, your prestige in life, your star status, your money, or anything like that. What I do care about is your inner workings, your personal stories.

And here are blogs: they show me glimpses of REAL human beings, not fictional characters. They teach me stuff, make me laugh, make me sad and melancholy, tell me about worlds I had no idea about, give me little gems to treasure, teach me new vocabulary and writing styles. They can give me ideas for future stories and I might get back to them one day for a consultancy on a particular subject.

But for whatever the reason, in fact because of all these reasons, blogs are the most amazing depiction of how human we can all be, and how very very easy it would be for us all to get to know each other a little better, and actually appreciate and understand each other a little more.

Illustration by Will Worthington

Of course, then you go on the internet to find an image you can relate to blogger and you find out about bloggers who were murdered in Bangladesh. And that’s the downside. These are real people, and people can use the privileged access a blog gives to a real person for the foul reasons driven by other real people’s evil intentions. May all bloggers always be able to live long, and tell us about them, and always be entitled to their word.