Three

Today, October 20, marks a full three years since I started this blog. So to commemorate the occasion, I’ve decided that today’s post shall be about ... blogging.

1. Blogging is the most superexcellent hobby in the world in my opinion. Even so, I often get in a total blogfunk and wonder why the hell I bother. Like when, say, 300 people log on, but only two stroke my ego by leaving a comment. I’ve often pondered the reasons why this blog has such a low comment-to-visit ratio, and come up with a multitude of possible explanations, none of which are satisfactory. After all, we bloggers do it for love – but we’re really in it for the comments. So – yes, more comments would be nice. Even if just for today.

2. There are some wonderful people out there who almost always leave a comment, and to them I now blow a big Cyberspace kiss and say THANK YOU, if it wasn’t for you I’d probably have packed it in ages ago.

3. Most everybody has a blog that inspired them to start their own. Mine was Mimi Smartypants.

4. The first blog I added to my blogroll was Jamie’s, and – fittingly – Jamie happened to be the first blogpal I made, that I actually met in person. That was last year, in Toronto, when I was on holiday and Jamie just happened to be passing through. EPI and I eloped on that trip, and just a few days ago, Jamie did the same thing with her s.o. at a drive-through chapel in Vegas. I’d like to find some serendipidous meaning in all that, but it’s probably just a fluke.

5. Incidentally, the whole business of blogrolls still manages to confound me from time to time. I’m honoured every time someone adds my blog to theirs, and still feel a vague sense of guilt if I don’t reciprocate. However, over the years I’ve learned that it’s impossible to add everyone [just as I’ve learned that it’s impossible to please everyone] and, in fact, the links on my blogroll have pretty much stayed the same for the past two years. My the main criteria for having them there is purely self-serving: they are – or in some cases, were – the blogs I visit[ed] most often. Since then I’ve started using Kinja and tend to add new blogs there, so effectively it’s replaced my blogroll, which nonetheless still stays up there, just ... because.

6. I’ve learned that making friends in Cyberspace is a lot like making friends in the schoolyard. Some people you connect with and they become firm friends; some people you like a lot yet only see from time to time; some people you admire but don’t necessarily have a connection with. And some people [e.g. those who email you with long, drawn-out treatises on the unsatisfactory relationship they have with their wife] you just want to avoid like the plague, for obvious reasons.

7. On that note, sometimes you meet really nice people in Cyberspace who have really enjoyable and worthwhile blogs and you’d really like to get to know them better – but you just don’t have time. Because, let’s face it, there are only so many blogs you can read in a day [or a week, or a month] because, well, there’s this pesky thing called LIFE that also needs your attention. And also this pesky thing called BLOG.

8. I’ve frequently wondered whether I should start another – separate – blog in which I write less about Nicelandic things and more about other things, that have more meaning, more depth, more value. Because, quite frankly, the things I go on about here are very one-dimensional and quite superficial and only showcase a small part of my experience and who I am and what I've learned. But then I abandon the idea, because a) I’m chicken and b) where would I find the time?

PLUS I’M GETTING A TAD WEARY OF THESE WEATHER REPORTS
But if I don’t write them, I really can’t call the blog The Iceland Weather Report, can I? I’d have to call it The Icelandic Report on Gratuitous Navel Gazing, which just doesn’t have the same ring to it. It’s been overcast and wet today – at first it was mild yet blustery, then at noon some horizontal rain was added to the mix for as long as it took me to walk from point A to point B, so I got soaked. By late afternoon the rain had stopped but the wind persisted and it was a nasty damp kind of cold. Right now 7°C [45F], the sun came up at 8:32 am and set at 17: 52.