Blogs Between Friends and Fewer Personal Emails

My best friend lives in Australia. Up until my first blog last November, we exchanged two or three emails a week, but they've gradually fizzled down to one every couple of weeks. She reads all of my blogs (I can see her in my geo-tracker), so seems to feel there's no reason to send personal messages. This is wrong, of course, because the pure nitty-gritty of my day could never be reflected in my blog, because I'm writing about art, or writing, not my Brighton Adventures. (The last was somewhat tongue-in-cheek. Brighton is a very quiet town.)

I wondered how many of you have found the same thing, that your friends simply read your blogs and are satisfied with that. When I think back to the days when I wrote huge epistles and mailed them to family and friends, I'm impressed with the diligence involved in that. Later, we learned how to cut and paste similar descriptive bits (didn't you?) into each email to save retyping it. Then along comes blogging. (Oh, and Twitter couldn't do it for me, nor Facebook. I can't think of a more frustrating way to keep in touch, although it works for me as a promotional tool.)

I do chase my friend up from time-to-time, because there are personal things I want to say to her, and I just know she has snippets, too (although she lives in an equally quiet suburb in Sydney). But, for the most part, she must feel close enough via my postings, even though I'm sure a lot of them must bore her.

If my Mum were alive, and computer-savvy, she would have loved this technology. I could imagine her commenting on my page, saying that I shouldn't have said this, or that I wasn't sounding myself and what was wrong? Instead, we exchanged air mails, hers on those whisper-thin, blue Aerogram thingies, writing into the tiniest corner to make the most of the cost of them, while I, being a Big Spender, sent page after page, thick in the envelope, and costing serious money. I followed my Mum's aging process by the quality of her handwriting. Gradually, over the years, it turned from full-bodied and confident to spindly and shaky, as her own physique did.

As I age, I doubt you'll be aware of it, unless I mention it. My blogs pretty well guarantee you'll never see my own tremulousness, should it appear. It's not inevitable, after all, just likely.

Do you still write letters to friends and family? Do you even send as many personal emails? Silly thing to wonder about on such a lovely Friday, but I've just "poked" my friend with an email, who does NOT have a blog page, and it got me thinking.

Have a lovely weekend, all of you. If you're lucky, you don't have to send letters or emails because your friends and family are close by. Wish I could say the same thing.