Other people's blogs.

Why do we follow other people’s blogs?

People who we’ve never met? People who don’t know of our existence, aside from commenting a few times on their pictures? Tumblr, blogger, and other similar websites have made it easy for us to follow the lives of total strangers, through their heartaches that they share, to their joys and triumphs.

But why? Why do we do this? Are we living vicariously, letting watching other people do things become our satisfaction? Or are we using them as examples, letting their triumphs become ours when we battle through the same things..

I read other people’s blogs, quite regularly. I check up on the families that I’ve watched form and grow before my very eyes; ten years ago this would be classed as stalking, as weird…but now? Now I’m not so sure. The people I’ve watched grow have inspired me, to take more pictures even when I don’t want to, to stop and breathe more, to eat vegetables more and sugar less, to be proud of myself and what I have achieved so far in my very young life., and to be patient. I know of a woman who waited for her husband for years; meeting first in Okinawa, then moving to America, and finally having him join her here, and eventually they got married. I know of a woman whose husband is a marvel, raising their two children while she brings home the bacon; they’ve swapped roles and received some grief for it but that’s what makes their marriage work. I know of a woman who has battled with infertility, and is now pregnant with her second child; I watched how her husband reacted to finding out the first time, and I wept with them. Because these people are not people that I know first hand. But these people, these women, are women that have inspired me, who have taught me so many things, who have been so generous with their families, with their love, that it has overflowed to their readers.

In my following of other blogs, I’ve learnt things I never thought I would learn. That romance only dies when you let it die, that documenting even the tiniest parts of a child’s first years becomes appreciated as that child grows faster than you dreamed, and that this moment, this very moment, is the most important moment at all. And there’s no use in wasting it on something you’ll later regret.

Go and live.

K.