Do you have imaginary friends?

Today's guest poster is Mel, who blogs regularly at A Box of Chocolates where she shares samples of her life as a wife to one, mom to three, and teacher to many.

Why do I do this to myself? One day I am going to learn to keep my mouth shut, or maybe I should say, my fingers still.

When Christine twittered that she was looking for some guest posters to baby-sit her blog my fingers, completely on their own, somehow twittered back that I would be honored to be a guest poster if she would have me. I mean she is Christine after all…Dr. Diva over Blissfully Domestic, where may I add that I am just a lowly Food Diva. Of course being the polite person that she is she gave in to my request to guest post and well here I am.

So could somebody tell me, what does one actually do when they guest post? Talk about this blog, talk about the author, talk about their blog, talk about themselves. Sheez. This is tough.

Well I’ll give it shot. Here we go. My first guest post.

Blogs, blogging, blogger. It’s all foreign to some and others just don’t get it.

When I first began blogging I didn’t really tell many people. Once I got some posts up and running I emailed the URL to distant family and friends so they could see pictures of my kids and what we have been up to. Many responded that they thought the blog was a great idea and enjoyed looking at the pictures of the kids. Of course I got the usual question, “Are you sure you want to post that much information about your family on the web?” (we’ll discuss that one during another babysitting time), but other than that they were all pretty supportive.

Then I discovered the Blogosphere where there were many just like me, and some that were so very much not like me, that I loved them too. I met amazing women and was even proud to call a few of them friends. Friends that I had never met, but friends nevertheless. As my excitement over this newfound community grew I found myself talking about my blog and blogging in general to my real life friends. After all it was my hobby so why shouldn’t I talk about it as they would talk about scrap booking, or cooking, or working out, or whatever it is that they did. I was proud of my blog.

For some of them they were intrigued. They asked how I got started, why I liked it, what it was like to meet other bloggers, how I decide what to write, how I find new blogs to read, and a plethora of other questions. For others they just kind of smiled and nodded and life went on.

They were happy that I was happy and it worked. Then for some, well they think it is just straight out strange. Such as the friend who told me during a girl’s night out, “It’s so weird that you are friends with all these people you have never met. It’s kind of like when you are a kid and instead of just having one or two imaginary friends you have an entire group.”

Uh no. Not really considering my “imaginary friends” have lives and blogs of their own, where you know, I can see their pictures and everything. Not to mention imaginary friends can’t leave comments so they wouldn’t be any good to me even in the blogosphere!

(Dude, I hear you! You are my REAL friend! Thanks! - Christine)