It's All Hugh Hewitt's Fault

My name is Debbie and I am a blog addict. There I have said it, I have named my addiction. I have power over it. Ha! I can step away anytime I want.

Really, my love for reading blogs is all Hugh Hewitt's fault. Mr. Hewitt is a conservative radio personality that I listen to on occasion. He is also a law professor and author and it is in his capacity as author that he led me down the path of blog addiction.

It wasn't until I read Mr. Hewitt's 2005 book "Blog" that I even found out what a blog is. "Blog" is short for "Web log" - an online site with time dated postings, maintained by one or more persons, that contains links and commentary. After finishing the book I said to myself, "Self, lets get on the World Wide Web and check out this blog thing. See what it is. It might be interesting for an afternoon." Yeah right.

So like any other thing that takes over your life I stuck my toe in the water, I sampled the kool aide, I typed in a web address. Hey, this is pretty cool I said to myself. So much information, so much news, so much much. Where to start, where to start. I think that I may have started with news/political blogs like Drudge, Michelle Malkin, Little Green Footballs and such. It is all sort of muddled in my brain now but I think that was the insidious beginning both of the problem and my political addiction as well. I just can't be sure. I digress. Anyway, once I began to read those blogs then I found other blogs that weren't news or politics based, those personal blogs that people maintain in a narcississtic attempt to let the world know what they are doing. Cough, cough. Oh yeah, I maintain one of those. Well never mind that comment.

When you begin to read personal blogs they often have what is called a "blogroll" listed on the site. This is a listing of the blogs that particular poster reads on a regular or semi regular basis. Click on one of them and it will take you right to that blog. Like that blog, well then you bookmark it so that you can remember where you found it and look at their blogroll. Click on more blogs, bookmark more blogs. Pretty soon you have so many blogs bookmarked that you can't possibly check all of them every day. Case in point, I started with Amy's Humble Musings which led me to Biblical Womanhood which led me to Money Saving Mom which led me in several different directions. You get the picture.

I will be honest and say that there are some blogs that I read that I have no idea where I came across them. Dooce would be one of those. Heather Armstrong has been blogging since at least 2001 and the name of her blog "dooce" has actually become a verb in some circles. To be "dooced" (sounds like moose) is to be fired from your job because of what you have written on your blog (which is what happened to Heather). She and I don't see eye to eye politically (an understatement) but I still love the blog and actually went back and read ALL the blog posts starting in 2001. Obsessive much?

Well, I have now begun a purge of my personal blog roll. I can't possibly read all the blogs that I have bookmarked, unless I don't want to do anything else. Some of the blogs have become less relevant to me, some of the bloggers have stopped posting. If a blogger doesn't post for a two month period without some explanation then I step away. Just my personal rule. I understand how hard it is to produce a post every day or few days and things happen in life but I lose interest if there aren't new posts.

So, I can stop this blog addiction any time I want. I mean I only bookmarked three new blogs yesterday. That's not so bad right?......Right?