selfless blog-gratuity

I try and read as many possible blogs during my day. Besides always partaking in the very basically depraved poen talk on my own blog, I love reading other blogs. There has been a strong upsurge of blogs starting in South Africa since the beginning of the year. And some of the writing is excellent. And entertaining, not to mention educating and insightful.

My blog’s 2-year birthday is in January. (It’s a Capricorn), and the blogs I read mostly all started sometime this year really. When I first started up Peas On Toast, it was only after months of reading other people’s. Mostly from the UK and the US, as not many SA blogs were around then. God knows I’m not a tech-wizard, I only found out what a blog was on reading an article about them in Cosmopolitan. I started writing, using real names and wrote in candid detail about my life, I was a mere picadot on the Internet. No one would ever possibly find this piece of shit, surely? Au contraire.

It was the best therapy ever. The comments I first started getting were from people I didn’t know, who lived in places like Oklahoma, Georgia and London. It became somewhat of a support group when things were cack.

Then for some reason Peas On Toast became another sounding board altogether, a very large support group, voyeurs, my mates, and of course, the ex boyfriends. This blog has got me into plenty trouble. But it has also been a daily ritual for me, where if I don’t blog, I feel like I haven’t had a full day. It’s been the most incredible medium for me for so many reasons: a support group, readers, writings, writers, therapy, sentiment, frustration bashing, and most importantly, being able to look back on what I’ve done, achieved, lived through and grown from.

It’ll just be hilarious when one day one of my kids turns to me and says: “You know mum, I was surfing the Net the other day….and I checked this blog Peas On Toast. She’s crazy. Don’t worry mum, I’ll never be like her.”
"Well that's a relief, my angel."
Fuck. Can you imagine.

Zuzula's blog is one I’ve been reading everyday since the very beginning, she’s my longest blog buddy. Love her.
My blogroll gets longer nearly every week. I can’t put everyone’s up there, but the one’s I read I think deserve a link. There are so many more that have popped up recently that I need to add. At first I didn’t think it wise to meet any of the other bloggers in person, and when I first walked into a room full of people where the screen didn’t separate us, was during the Blog Awards. Now I’ve met so many, and it’s nice to know them. We really are a community.

I still cannot believe how much my blog has changed my life. People come up to me and ask if I’m Peas in night clubs and social gatherings, I have found work through my blog, I have collated emails from people writing to me from places like Antarctica (can you believe it?), it’s got me back in touch with lots of people I have lost contact with, people offering to beat up my ex-boyfriends for me, being a delegate at a blog conference, I get letters that are complimentary, I get letters that aren’t, I get links sent to me, I get asked on dates (can you dig it?), I’ve been sent presents (which was particularly lovely), and I’ve made an insurance company shit themselves.
All because of Peas On Toast. It amazes me, and I can’t tell you how much I love my readers and fellow bloggers.

I wonder if I’ll be doing it for the rest of my life, or one day, when I finally have all my shit together – ha ha whatever – I’ll disemblog forever. Or maybe when life gets boring and I eventually settle down with a white picket fence, a rat and an Audi A3.
Or maybe I’ll be blogging from Cancun, as a retired old lady that drinks way too much whiskey and dates men half her age. Maybe.