My sister wrote a post the other day where she said, “i’m done blogging.”
I called her and we talked a little bit and I admitted to her that I’ve acutually thought of doing the exact same thing sometimes.
I started justkeeton many years ago and it was mostly out of vanity of learning how to do something new. I had learned html and I wanted to see how far I could take it.
The thing is…it took me.
I started ‘Ohana’ because I was feeling something bubbling up inside of me, this new beginning to something and I wanted to watch it grow.
I started Random and Odd because ‘Ohana’ was no longer ‘mine’ anymore.

Many of you have ‘secret blogs’. I have been lucky enough to stumble through some of them. I find that I am more amused by what you write when you think no one is watching. I like the way your writing comes from the heart. It’s not like you’re writing to tell a story, your writing because it’s being torn out of you!

What makes a sucessful blog? Honesty without fear. Boundry lines that are clearly set.

‘Cita and I went to bingo one night and the place caught on fire. No, I didn’t have anything to do with it…this time. The people were evacuated and we were told that we would have to come back the following week to play out the games.
I was pissed! I wanted to be able to go back in and get my money back!
Many people decided they were going to talk to the manager about how they felt about the ‘coming back next week’ issue. I jumped on the bandwagon.
The old bat that was running the joint clearly did not take her medication that night because she was screaming at people that had the nerve to insist on getting a refund. I was one of them. Because I’m a good, upstanding bingo player (and I was scared shitless of that little old lady) I came back the next week to play out my games of bingo.

That night, the little old bat was in charge of handing out the free bingo papers to the people who had played that week the place caught fire. She KNEW she was going to get some lip from people so she wore a hat that said, “Queen Bitch”. She wore a shirt that said, “Queen Bitch”. She had a tiarra on that said, “Bitch”. She was letting everyone there know that she wasn’t going to listen to us bitch about a damn thing.

I don’t like that queen bitch, but I admire the point she made. It was HER bingo palace, and she was in charge.

There was only one time I was afraid to hear that someone read my blog. The parents of Tyler’s girlfriend. I didn’t want my words to effect the way people judge my children. I want my children to have a fair shot at whatever they want to do with their lives and I didn’t want them to say, “Whoa, that is the woman that is raising him? Should we really trust our child to be at someone’s house who opens her whole life up to the internet on a daily basis?”

The other thing about taking pictures and writing is that it has gone from taking pictures to taking pictures and then having to ask the person if it’s okay if I post them because it’s no longer just my mom and sister looking at them, it’s thousands of strangers.

As I was typing this post I got a phone call from a parent asking me if I knew my daughter had her own website on MySpace. I explained to her that I do know about it and I use it as a way of keeping tabs on what is going on with not only her behavior, but her friends. The mother was concerned about the safety factor of having my daughter post pictures of herself. During the whole conversation I’m thinking, ‘The internet knows more about what is going on with my family, than her grandpa does!’ Yes, STRANGERS are watching my children grow up, go to dances, meet boys…and am I a bad parent for that? I never asked my beautiful friend, Lisa if it was okay if her daughter be spotlighted on my blog. I never asked ‘Cita if it was okay if I posted a link to her son’s radio station. These are things I should have done from the start…but I never in a million years would have thought that I would have as many people reading my blog as I do.
Just last night, Shaun said, “Your Flickr site has been viewed over 48 thousand times.”

48 THOUSAND times. I can’t even count that high!

The precautions I take now are telling people when I take their picture and tell them that I will post it on the internet for them to copy it, “I’m going to post this on my Flickr site. My Flickr site is linked to my website. I have ________ readers a day. Is it okay?” They are more curious as to WHAT I write about that would make that many people want to read.
I tell them, “I write about everyday type of things. I write about my anxiety, my life, something funny that happened. What I did that weekend.”
I get that same strange look EVERY SINGLE TIME. I’m waiting for someone to ask, “Are you really THAT interesting that people come to your site everyday to see what you’re doing?”

Then I can say, “not really. It’s the talk about boob hair and the occational porn picture I will post that keep them coming back.”