A blogless blogger finally blogs...

After essentially being a blogless blogger for a very long time, I am finally venturing formally into the blog domain. I have been writing online as bridgebldr (or BridgeBuilder) for quite some time, most visibly and frequently in the Oprah discussion forum and more recently in compressed form on Twitter.

It's truly amazing that more people haven't discovered the gratification and sense of community derived from discussion forums such as Oprah's, even the visibility. But it's a pure art straight from the heart, in many ways a throwback to earlier days online, and this is not the first discussion forum I have participated in, nor the last. There is no one who is going to pay you by popularity, no way to include ads, and the focus is somewhat more on the content of what EVERYONE has to say on a particular thread, as essentially equal participants.

It is because of a very lively discussion in that location right now, ranked #1 in popularity at this very moment on Oprah's front page, that I'm finally venturing into becoming an "official" blogger. It's not the first time I have managed to get a topic onto Oprah's front page - it's actually an amazingly approachable thing to do, though you wouldn't think so, and there is no way of planning or predicting it - it just happens when it happens. [Note: As of 1/2010, the Oprah web site no longer surfaces popular forum posts to front page.]

I do venture where others often fear to tread, but I'm used to it by now. Be aware that discussion forum threads are a bit different from blogs in format. They tend to start small with a question, then grow into blog-like responses, kind of like blogging in reverse.

And I post a completely different form of content on Twitter (http://www.twitter.com/bridgebldr) - this is where you'll see my poetic side come out, one tweet at a time. I like to post affirmations that are spiritually uplifting, giving people a little boost to their day.

Ultimately I am finally doing what I love to do: WRITE

And I intend to do A LOT more of it now, in many diverse ways. I was always a writer from the day I learned to hold a pen. It was my writing that was my passion and my purpose, or so it seemed. But then a day came when my voice hushed itself into silence. Maybe we will talk about that another time.

Thankfully another day dawned, after many years of rest, and on that day, I finally found something to write about...