Muley Says Thanks

Even though I'm long past giddy childhood (at least in the most obvious sense), I still can be incredibly naive at times. Take this blog, for example.

A week ago on an absolute whim, I decided to do this to have some sort of public outlet for the little thoughts that went through my head and sometimes got jotted down in notebooks, only to be pulled out again "sometime." Well, thanks to a web-savvy friend showing me how easy it was to blog, "sometime" arrived before I knew it.

My early thought process went like this: I'll write some stuff for a few weeks, when no one will even know I'm doing it, just to see if I can actually create prose the way I want it, and see if I can be faithful to some sort of production schedule. Then, maybe in two weeks, I'll tell my closest friends about the blog and see if they want to read it. Then, maybe a couple of weeks later, I'll tell other friends.

I thought that maybe in a month or so, if one of my friends liked what I had written, they perhaps might mention it to a friend, who also might mention it to a friend, and I'd get a few readers I didn't know personally. However, all of them would still be tied to me in some fashion, in a Kevin Bacon "Six Degrees of Separation" sort of way.

Now do you see what I mean about being naive? Sure, I knew that the Internet spans the globe, 24/7, and that lots of people surf a lot of sites for a lot of different reasons (I know I do my share). But it never really hit me until this week just how widespread -- and FAST -- the Internet is.

Within days of making my first post, I had two comments -- both from total strangers. I wondered, how in the heck did they even know about me? I thought I was still under all radar, and I was flabbergasted, to say the least. I later figured out there's listings on blogger.com of newly posted sites, so I guess that's where these readers found me. But I still was amazed -- especially when one of the comments came from a nice woman all the way across the Atlantic Ocean from me.

Then, a few days later, my mind was really blown when Dawn Eden, one of my blogger heroes who I've been reading for months, said some nice things about Muley's World on her great blog, the Dawn Patrol. This was totally unsolicited by me, let me tell you, and it blew me away that within four days of beginning a blog, I had someone of her stature I respect saying good things about me.

Now, you may think I'm just using false modesty to fish for further compliments, or being faux-naif, but I'm not. I'm still a bit taken aback by what an amazing contraption this Internet thingie is, and I remain so thankful that there are people out there who would actually want to read something I wrote without being threatened at gunpoint.

To those of you who are reading this, and those of you who have commented, I appreciate your interest so much. This is the last time I'll be this flat-out gushy --- I promise -- but I wanted to pause on a busy weekend and say thanks for some great experiences I was not expecting.

I hope to see you in Muley's World again soon.

Quote of the day:

"Many just want life to return to normal when 'normal' –– designer religion, materialism, crass sensuality and relentless entertainment –– is precisely what God wants us to repent of."

--Douglas Grouthius
in Moody, Jan./Feb. 2003