Blogs can keep us together (Think of me, Babe, whenever . . .)

Embarrassing Confession of the Day: When I was in high school, I was addicted to IMing with strangers. I would have said addicted to chat rooms, but that wouldn't be true. I actually hated the chat room atmosphere - twelve conversations flowing at once and generally at least one of them being entirely inappropriate. My strategy was to go into the chat room, find one or two (or three or four) people who seemed interesting and chat with them privately. If that went well, we became AIM or MSN Messenger buddies. Once I had a pretty good store of buddies, I stopped the chat room visits. I would talk to my new "friends" about almost anything. Until my senior year of high school, I had VERY few (try one) close friends in real life, and so these on-line confidantes were the best thing I had. They were my escape. The ones who knew the real me that I kept hidden from everyone else. They didn't know me in real life, so I could be the funny, cool, interesting girl that I was too afraid to be in reality.
When I started gaining flesh and blood friends, I realized my need for digital chatter gave way to a longing for real human interaction - going to football games, sleepovers and late-night-Steak-n-Shake runs.
However, by my senior year of college blogging had become quite the fad and I, once again, became hooked - addicted. Once again, I could reveal little parts of my soul without feeling judged. And, as I've always been better at expressing myself in writing, rather than by spoken word, I relished in the ability to get my thoughts out there to the world. And something even more amazing - others felt the same way as me!
During this blogging era, we can connect to others through these digital journals, broadcast to the world and suddenly, by reading the thoughts of another on their biggest pet peeves, struggles and inner demons, we realize - we're not that different after all. Every one of us seems to be scrambling through life, trying to pull everything together while keeping up appearances that we already have everything together so that we're not the ONLY ones who have NOTHING together and now we can see, plain as day - we're not alone! NO ONE has everything together! And it is through these on-line forums that we feel free to confess this tiny fact. Isn't it interesting?
Perhaps this blunt honesty can transfer to our true lives and soon we'll have a whole lot less fake, a whole lot more genuine and a more relaxed, free body of human beings surviving together on this rock we call Earth.