How Blogging Made Me Rich

June 10, 2010 · by Joanna Paterson · in

Okay, so it’s a cheat headline.

Blogging hasn’t made me rich, not if you’re talking dollars, or good old fashioned pounds, shillings and pence.

If you’re talking dollars, or good old fashioned pounds, shillings and pence I’d say blogging has probably cost me money, rather making me any.

But still, I feel rich.

I find myself stopping and thinking sometimes, at odd moments of the day, and night, about people I’ve got to know through this weird obsession we share, this need to write, to record, to explore, to learn, to connect with each other.  To blog.

I think about the people I’ve got to know, the things I’ve discovered, the ways I’ve learned to express myself.

I think about bloggers I know.

I think about someone who’s just starting a new job, about a father who is getting ready for his son’s wedding, about a mother delighting in her children playing, I think about a woman getting ready to let her writing burst the banks, about a burst of sunshine lighting up someone’s day, about an artist finding words and painting strokes that say source, sorrow, passion, truth, about a sure fire blessing of a friend who’s brave enough to say she’s sad sometimes, and when I do that, when I stop and think of you:

I know that I am rich.

Drafting this in my head, one of my favourite poems came to mind.

I know this is a love sonnet, but maybe it works for friendship, blogger style, too.

If so, this is for you.

Sonnet 29

When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possess’d,
Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven’s gate;
For thy sweet love remember’d such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

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