Give a person a fish and you feed them for a day; teach that person to use the Internet and they won't bother you for weeks. ~Author Unknown
Warning: the Internet may contain traces of nuts. ~Author Unknown
my name is jacki, and i am a blogoholic
i have always been an internet junkie. i love reading, and the internet just seems to intrigue me. i have always loved going to a site for a reason, and then just following links, not knowing where they would lead me. A journey of a thousand sites begins with a single click. ~Author Unknown.
but my fascination has always been curtailed by slow and expensive internet connections.
i still have a slow connection, and not nearly as much time as i would like, but late at night, when everyone is asleep and the internet is faster, i get to look for my fix. then i get to really surf the net, and just enjoy where it takes me.
i discovered blogs recently. my son has had a blog for years, and i read it from time to time, but other that his, i never really found anything interesting, only annette scholtz's blog. she is south african, and into scrapping and photography and photoshop.
when we were preparing for the scrapbook convention in september, i was told that one of the teachers, wilna furstenburg, had some tips on her blog about how to prepare for her class. so i checked it out. and that first visit really changed my internet life! wilna, thank you for opening the portal to a journey into another dimension, a journey that is eating hours of my weeks, stealing my sleep, taking me away from tv - good thing, and encroaching into my scrapping time. just before the convention, i heard that donna downey also had a blog, so now i had three wonderful places to visit on an almost daily basis.
but, when you visit a blog on a regular basis, you only read the latest post, as you have already read the others. or you get there, and to your dismay, the person has no new post! how disappointing... doesn't she realize how much i need her daily post, my daily fix? so what do you do now? you follow the links on her blog, by clicking on the words in the text that are in colour, like those in mine, or the links on the side bar of the blog, and you see where they take you. and sometimes, you find a little door, a new portal to a different world! one that is interesting, and wonderful, and well written, and beautiful. it is like meeting a fascinating new friend, one you cannot wait to get to know better, one you cannot wait to visit again. and before you know it, you have 10 or 15 or 20 people who you pop into on a regular basis.
the amazing thing is that i learn from each one. not every time, maybe. not huge things, maybe. but each one sows a little seed. each one adds a layer to that picture that is forming in my mind. each one adds a little to my life, in her own way. some write beautifully. they are word-artists, who paint colourful pictures with their keyboards, like kelly rae roberts. some remind me of GOD's love for me and HIS promise in my life, like wilna furstenburg. some make me feel inspired to embark on a slow and scary journey out of my comfort zone and into a searching for my inner artist, like donna downey and suziblu and judy wise. some take me with them to a strange country, far far away, like heidi swapp, who was one of the teachers at the 2005 scrapbook convention, and who just moved to china with her husband and 5 little children. some are scrappers that freely share their ideas, like karen burniston and margie romney-aslett and becky higgins, she is the one who does the becky's sketches we love so much in creating keepsakes magazine, and ali edwards, who is a scrapper and also a mother of an autistic child called simon. some are fun mothers, most are scrapbookers, and all are creative in their own way. they let me peep into their lives, they share a tiny bit of their innermost secrets, they make me laugh and cry and think. most leave me feeling very envious and in awe of their respective talents, and leave me wishing that i had even a fraction of their artistic abilities. My favorite thing about the Internet is that you get to go into the private world of real creeps without having to smell them. ~Penn Jillett
that is one of the reasons why i had to start my own blog. it is therapeutic. it is fun. it is a way to increase the footprint of my shop. but it also gives me a fabulous excuse to have to do lots of research into other blogs, so i can improve mine.
i really don't need more blogs to visit, but if you have someone that really inspires you, let me know. and if you don't, than put the kids to bed, kiss hubby goodnight, make some coffee, and re-read this blog post, and follow the links like breadcrumbs into the blogosphere, and meet my friends...
