I didn’t really know what a blog was until the last couple of years. When I first saw one it was a woman’s online journal about her experience having celiac disease, or an allergy to gluten found in wheat and other grains. I was diagnosed with celiac disease about ten years ago, but it is still useful for me to find new writings about it and how to have a successful diet and lifestyle while having this affliction. I have a female friend who thought she had celiac disease but it turned out that she actually had a gut changing bacteria that she picked up in Asia somewhere. She has to have an operation on her stomach soon and she still appears to have the problem even though she’s been treated in several different ways for it recently.

When she first started having problems she thought it was celiac disease, and in fact though it is not, it is still good for her to eat less wheat so she continues to do so. When she thought it was celiac disease though, I benefited because she is a thorough person and finds everything she can about a subject. She sent me a whole bunch of articles plus a link for a free online blog or two where I could learn more about my own symptoms. I learned quite a bit reading the free online blog because the woman writing it was from Portland, Oregon which is just a few hours away from where I live. I have several friends there and so I learned some rad restaurants I could go to both in Seattle and Portland.

I went down there to stay for my birthday a year ago or so and we were able to go get gluten free fish and chips plus gluten free beer and birthday cake as a result of reading the free online blog. I was very excited about this. As a person with celiac disease you get used to not going out for your treats and usually only getting to have treats at home. People pretend they know if something contains gluten or not but it fact most people are fairly ignorant about the subject. Due to reading the blog by someone with the same syndrome I have, my life opened up a little bit and I got to have some fun I wouldn’t have had without reading it. Since then I still explore blogs online and I’ve found them to be a useful link to community and experience in this weird technological time.

Studying creative writing is a worthwhile experience.  Each teacher teaches differently and so even if you take tons of different writing courses you will come up with diverse bursts of creativity from within you depending on how you are studying writing.

I always wrote on my own and so by the time I realized I wanted to study writing I was so ready to be around other writers and to have a writers group around me.  I got this because I chose to go to an arts school where I could focus primarily on creative writing.  It was very exciting to be surrounded by other writers.  It was a boarding school and was a high school but it attracted the cream of the cream as far as the young students who went there.  Once one of my writing classes had a local public high school visit and the students from a writing class there read their poems and then we read some of ours.  There was no comparison.  Most of the writing students at my school were really good and had great teachers who had helped them to access their writing voices and it certainly showed.

I definitely did have a sense of writing community when I went to that school.  I identified myself as a writer.  The different types of artists there grouped together and identified strongly within their own groups.  The actors and music people all spent time together as did all the writers and visual artists.  It was very exciting for me to be surrounded by other writers.  I was seventeen years old when I went to this school.  I received criticism from my grandparents for choosing to go there as a post graduate from high school because they had given me the money I spent to go there when I graduated.  When it came down to it I didn’t care.  They thought I should spend the money on a car but I knew that I needed a year to decide which college I wanted to go to and I wanted more than anything to have a chance to write and only write without having to take other requirements.  I took four writing courses per semester at that school plus one visual art course.  I don’t think I’ve ever spent a more productive school year.  More than anything else in my life, attending that school helped me tap into my writing voice and I had grown incredibly by the time I was finished.

Journal is a word that has multiple meanings.  Since I’ve always been an avid reader I love reading all kinds of books, magazines and newspapers. It’s always a treat to find a new one, especially if it has crossword puzzles in it.  Where I live, about once a week in the mail I find a copy of the local free journal.  In bigger cities they don’t mail these out, you have to go pick one up yourself if you want one.  I can pick up this same free online blog myself from the library here too but I find it very convenient that they mail it to me. And, it has a great crossword puzzle in it!  So I have two resources that I can access from the privacy of my home without having to drive anywhere, to get a free crossword puzzle.

The other resource is the Seattle Sunday paper. Our Aunt orders this one and pays for it, so that if she and Granny are ever up here for a weekend, Granny will have something to do.  Granny can’t get around too much anymore, but when she was healthy and young she was a CPA and a business person. The paper is very important to her. If you give her a local paper, she can stay busy with it for hours. It works the same if you give her some of her own paperwork such as bills. Those can be dangerous though, because sometimes she thinks she should sign up for things that she should not sign up for, plus she can’t write very legibly these days.  So if she tries to write letters they end up having to be redone by someone.

So in that way, a newspaper is a better source of entertainment for her, because then she just reads the articles and clips coupons and doesn’t try to change her bank accounts or sign up for “free” offers.  Myself,  I like to buy crossword books at the grocery store when I can afford them. One of these will keep me going for a month or so, but it is also a big treat for me to receive the Sunday paper every week whether Granny is here to enjoy it or not.  It has two big free crossword puzzles in it, and I always look forward to them.

In the past I joined all kinds of different groups in hopes of learning something important. I took part in a dream group, a journal writing group, a womans group, a belly dancing group, an improv acting group  and a writers group among others.

I did take away quite a lot of knowledge and personal growth depending on the group and the teacher of the group. I tried attending groups where I had to pay a facilitator or teacher to lead the group. I also attended groups composed of my peers where we were doing it for fun, led it ourselves and didn’t have to pay anyone.

In college I had to take part in a writers group that was part of my full course of learning, what they called a ‘program’ at my college. This was a journal writing workshop that was led by a highly skilled teacher. But I did also notice that she heavily utilized a book about how to lead yourself on a journal writing journey.

When I was done with school and moved to a city, this gave me an idea. I was writing a lot of poetry plus short, true stories and by that time I had tried out a bunch of different types of support groups for writing. I didn’t want to pay anyone to be in a writers group at that point because I couldn’t afford to.

I asked a bunch of my friends if they wanted to form our own group together. We would meet once a week at a local café and choose writing exercises from several good books.

Three of us ended up doing this for more than a year. Everyone else dropped out, but we all liked it enough and got enough variety from it that we just wanted to keep on going. We tried a lot of different types of writing and we all felt that our writing skills grew in leaps and bounds from trying new things plus getting feedback from each other.

It was fun, plus if we didn’t feel that much like writing we could always just talk to each other and drink coffee. I became much closer with these women than I expected to, and we maintained a friendship beyond writing after schedules changed and we decided not to continue on with the group.

One of the lessons I learned from this was that choosing an activity that you usually have to pay money to learn and facilitating it yourself is both fun and effective. And it can have extra benefits such as adding interest to the rest of your life and perking friendships.

I used to spend a lot more time surfing the internet than I currently do. When I had an internet connection at my fingertips in my home, I would do google searches for fun on anything I was interested in.

I learned pretty quickly that it was dumb to give out my email address. In the meantime I also found some really cool websites. I found a great site with information about Chinese herbs, a free astrology site, a site with make-up tips from other women, and a writing site with a free online blog.

The writing site boasted a few contests. It said that I could win ten grand by getting first prize with my poem.

I wasn’t sure I believed that too much. It seemed like too much money to win for doing almost nothing. I read some of the previous winning poems on this writing site, and they didn’t seem super special to me. They were okay but nothing to write home about. Ha!

I didn’t want to enter their contest, but it was still fun to find a website devoted to writing. I spent quite a bit of time perusing some of the theme poems they had posted.

Then I went back to the herbal site and learned a bunch about Asian healing remedies. I was working for a non-profit right down the street from some great Asian grocery stores. They had great deals on unusual supplements.

Some of them had weird ingredients such as ‘gecko pienis’ which was why I tried to find a Chinese herbal site in the first place.

I wanted to know if that was what it sounded like. Unfortunately, it was. So I decided not to purchase the health remedy containing it, and then I went back to learning about astrology, writing and cosmetics. The internet is certainly fun and addictive, and sometimes very educational!

If you want to learn about nature or art or shopping, or just about any topic out there, there are most likely some free blog sites on the internet where you can join in and learn.

When I was first exploring the internet I found some free blog sites that were devoted to makeup lovers.  It was humorous I thought, how all of the women on the blogs spent so much time on there writing about what makeup they wanted to buy.  They also all gave a run down of what makeup they put on their face that day and most of them told what they were wearing as well.  Most of them were probably at work while they were spending time blogging.

It made me laugh but I also found it sad in a way.  It didn’t seem like a real connection.  When I explored these sites further I found a whole bunch of reviews sorted by brand and types of makeup such as lipstick.  These were very helpful because you could read about other people who had your coloring and find good colors for you, and good deals.  I still thought a huge website devoted to makeup was a little funny but the point is, whatever your interest there is going to be a site devoted to it.

Free blog sites can be spots where people end up forming friendships.  I made a friend via one of the online community sites and he found me through a blog on there about international travel.  When he read my profile and saw my pictures he became more interested in me so we started chatting over the internet.  We eventually met each other.  We both attended the Burning Man Festival in Gerlach, Nevada and set up the meeting when we found out we would both be there.

When we met there we were both interested in knowing each other better and eventually we ended up traveling together in Thailand.  This was because he was already in Japan when I went to Thailand and he wanted to do some extra travel while abroad.  The point here is that the free blog we both posted on had people on it that all had the same interest.  If you have one big interest in common such as world travel or creative writing, then it follows that you may very well have enough in common to become friends. I still know the man I traveled with and I have met other friends’ blogging as well. I find blogs both fun and useful.  They are a great way to learn more about something, and to meet others who share your interests.