Those of us hired here as bloggers at the beginning of Adoptionblogs.Com have, as of today, been doing this for ten months. Some post more often than others, but I'll bet even those who get nowhere near the 43 per month per blog some of us aim for are seeing happenings in their world, and the bigger one, as blog fodder. It gets under your skin, this blogging thing, and after almost a year identities are bound to be tied to the work in one way or many.

I have no idea what criteria was used when the 26 original bloggers were hired. I know there were hundreds of applications, so the powers-that-be in the Adoptblog World had to do more than simply take what was offered. There was thought put into who got the jobs and which jobs they got, apparently. (Which is not the same as a-parently, by the way, but in some cases is close.)

Although I don't read every post on every blog, I do spend some time every day going over the "what's new" page, and like all readers, I have my favorites. From the comments I get, I have a pretty good idea who reads me, too, and although most of us wouldn't know another adoption.com blogger if they walked up and bit us (and only a couple of us would even contemplate such a thing), we have developed into a community.

Because of what we do, we know a lot about the details of each other's lives. Our husbands are familiar, even if we haven't been introduced and may not even know their names. We've had peeks at in-laws and have an idea of friends. Our kids are common currency, since they're what it's all about here, and we laugh and learn and lean on each other as we read and write about our children, their issues and their lives.

Also because of what we do, our personalities are on display. Some of us get on well. Others would not choose to spend time together in person, but we're okay sharing a page. In my case, I've even had a major conflict that managed to be resolved through cyberspace, resulting in my gaining a friend whose thoughts and opinions I greatly value. (That's you, Jan.)

Although we do interact in our little blogworld to a certain extent, it is by its very nature solitary work, this blog business. Any writing is.

Writing is living in your head, jotting down what goes on there, then sending it off into the ethersphere ... fact or fiction, long or short, done is done and off it goes. Writing a blog is doing that, but different in some important ways from a book, or even magazine and newspaper articles.

It's more like a conversation, but days can go by without any input whatsoever. We poor bloggers foolishly convince ourselves that we've got any controversial tiger we've decided to write about by the tail, since our internal dialog has examined all the angles ... that we notice ... and come up with convincing arguments against any faulty logic ... as we see it ... and can site relevant sources ... we managed to locate.

Continued ...