Advantages of blogging

After 4.5 years (yes really) of blogging, I have decided there are some advantages so I think I will probably continue for a while longer.

• - I get to express my opinions. I think I probably have lots of opinions - on doctors, being a patient, pinkinficiation, stupidity (on my part and by others), working, pets, married life, commuting, medications, medical misadventures & procedures, medications, insurance companies, health care reform, pharmaceutical companies, driving, cancer research, the elusive cancer cure, and I am sure the list goes on. But I get express my opinion in my blog. I consider it 'my space' and would miss it if I didn't blog any more. And I have lots of opinions. My husband would probably consider a divorce if he had to listen to my opinions every day. So maybe it helps preserve my marriage as well. Or he would just listen to his iPod more so he couldn't hear me.

• - I choose the topics I want to blog on. People do send me requests to blog on their sites or about their book/movie/organization or to help support them. I generally ignore them because I don't have time, it isn't the purpose of my blog, and basically, I don't want to. Occasionally I do write about some of the suggested topics but only if it really intrigues me. I read the daily paper, local and national news online and sometimes overseas and follow a bunch of blogs. I find topics in lots of places and write about what is interesting on that day. Sometimes I look back and try to figure out why I wrote on that topic and assume it must have interested me at the time.

• - I get to control the information flow. I started my blog in June 2007 to control the information flow about my second round of cancer medical misadventures. I could write about what I wanted to. If I wasn't ready to discuss it, I wouldn't write about it. I am essentially a lazy person and don't want to answer a lot of phone calls and emails. This is true to this day. I only write about my medical misadventures that I am ready to. By the end of October I will probably have had 10 appointments this month, including a couple of adventures with needles. I am not ready to talk about all of them. Some of them are just boring anyway. (I had a two minute appointment yesterday with my meds therapist and the result is she refilled my prescription and I will see her again in three months.) The rest of them I'm not talking about, and may never. 

So blogging may become a fixture in my life, if it hasn't already, as I have found benefits in it. I just haven't figured out who all the people are who read  my blog. It amazes me how many do read it. Maybe they would miss it if I stopped as well.