Susie Monday . El Cielo Studio

I'm just 6 months old as a blogger. Nothing to boast about, in this area of technology, I've been a late adopter I think. And the technosphere keeps blasting past me (is blogging even still considered an edge?).

Me and my morning blogging companions, Cheech and Lucky (big blur). 

 However, I  have made it past the danger zone of short starts, and after the initial stage of panic that I would have nothing to write about, I find the discipline and order of keeping track of my studio ideas and activity, even in a two-or-three-in-a-lucky-week mode, has much to reccommend it. If nothing else,  this writing keeps me on the lookout for ideas outside "my field." We artists can so easily find ourself locked into the the art ghetto, even the art quilt ghetto. Time on our hands is wisely focused on our craft, our colleagues, our cliches, the next deadline. It's quite easy to forget that an enormous world is happening out there.

Keeping a blog has been a key for me to the outside bigger world of business and enterprise, fine art and fashion, technology and trend. It keeps me honest, when my little world is exploding with ego. Keeps me level headed when the next crisis pops up in the fiber arts world of San Antonio and surrounds. Keeps me stretching with ideas that challenge my own self-importance. And, as someone who once wrote for a big city paper, gives me the writer's satisfaction of self-publishing sans city desk deadlines.

I may never have a readership of 2,000 or 20,000, as do some of the blogs I follow, but every month the number of readers grows and the comments I receive feed my inner scribe. Sobeit.

 Here's what one was posted today at my newest finds --Merlin Mann's site about personal productivity, 43folders.
(He was sharing his contribution to Brian Bailey's new book, The Blogging Church: Sharing the Story of Your Church Through Blogs. )

The most exciting and difficult time for a new blogger is the barn-raising period after the new blog is launched and the daily dash for new and interesting content begins. As perhaps thousands of ostensible bloggers discover — sometimes as early as their site’s inaugural week — this can be surprisingly hard work. It’s hard not simply for the obvious reasons — that regularly-scheduled writing (or photography or even just linking) takes time, preparation, and care. You may also have days where you just have nothing to say and are tempted to meta-whine about how you have nothing to say. You may find yourself padding pages with the results of online personality tests or the latest funny-once meme du jour. Resist this with extreme prejudice.

Remember that your blog is only incidentally a publishing system or a public website. At its heart, your blog represents the evolving expression of your most passionately held ideas. It’s a conversation you’re holding up with the world and with yourself — a place where you can watch your own thoughts take different shapes and occasionally surprise you with where they end up…
That last fact is something I learn and re-learn every single week, and it’s still the most surprising and illuminating dividend of thinking and writing in public.

Thus said, and so well, if you are thinking about writing a blog, I say, GO FOR IT. This internet thing is changing the world, and at 59 (nearly) I am determined to stay on the slopes for a while longer, even if the lifts operate on ether and the black diamond trails are reserved for 20-somethings. (OK, I never was a skier, but you get what I mean.)