The affect of your words

Many fellow bloggers will relate when I say that sometimes it is difficult to know what to write.  From time to time I 2nd guess myself and my topics.  Many times I write about the goings on in my life (visitors, weekend plans, haircuts, home projects, etc) and later wonder if it is interesting at all to anyone.  Sometimes people leave comments on those posts which is a bit of an indicator, but my blog stats always show that there are far more visitors than commentors, so again I sometimes wonder about the level of interest.  When one is unsure of this, it makes one wonder if they should continue blogging.

Two things happened recently that really made me re-examine my blog motivation and re-affirmed my desire to continue:

1. While looking for something within my blog I reread a post where I described a time in my life before I was 'out' or really knew gay people.  I witnessed what I believed to be 4 gay couples having Sun brunch at a diner.  Although I didn't speak to them and they likely never saw me, their very presence there eating, talking, laughing, and just living their (gay) lives had an affect on me.  It made me happy and a little excited.  This was several years before the internet, but I now think that blogging can have a similar affect.  A closeted person might stumble upon my blog and read about me, Spouse, and our friends eating, talking, laughing, and just living our (gay) lives and that may have a positive affect on them.  They may read this and think "I want to have that some day."  Not that my life is enviable by any means - but a life lived openly and authentically.
2. I recently received an email from a reader I'll refer to as "B".  His email in part said "I wanted to thank you for mentioning you were planning to get an undercut hairstyle. I asked my hairstylist if an undercut would work for me. Personally, I think of if as a kind of modified "high and tight" like Marines get. It was a success! My partner loves it, got lots of compliments on it when I visited my family for Mothers' Day and went to church with them (ugh), compliments at the doctors' offices, and compliments at the pharmacy! Thanks again for talking about your life on your blog, because otherwise it would never have occurred to me to try something new."  As you can imagine, this email made my day!  But more than that, it made me see the affect that my blogging can have on others.  The world is a prettier place thanks to my blog!  Kidding aside, B read/implemented an idea found on my blog and has had great results.

Literally as I was typing this post, I remembered another occasion where my blog resulted in good for someone else.  The editor of a small/local newspaper printed one of my blog posts word-for-word in the paper to drum up business for the restaurant I wrote about.  The owners were so happy they framed the article and it hangs on the wall to this day.

So the point of this entire post is:  blog about your life!  Be it glamorous or mundane, you just never know the affect your words might have on others.