Time Wasted?

This is by way of being a confession of basic weakness. I dislike those who talk one way and behave another. I haven't said as much, but I deplore the amount of (wasted?) time spent at my computer when I'm not producing.

The trouble is the number of people I sincerely call friends whom I've never met except on the Internet. They're my justification for spending so much time reading and writing things like this blog.

I've wondered about those legions of writers from before the time of rapid communications we're accustomed to today, whose letters we wouldn't be able to read if they'd been able to correspond almost instantly.

Yet I wouldn't give up the friends I've made with people whose interests intersect so comfortably with my own, on whom I depend, and whom I've never met.

That's how I justify these hours spent finding out what's on their minds and presuming to share what's on mine. I know that if I don't show up every so often with a post, they might not be there for me. I know I need to be there for them!

Where Do They Live?

Most of the time I don't think of checking Sitemeter. Today I took a look at the stats and asked for a breakdown of points of origin for visitors. What a surprise! Jordan; Denmark; Ireland...France wasn't a surprise because my granddaughter has been there since January, but repeated visits from someone in a city in Connecticut where I don't believe I know anyone? In fact, except for half a dozen places not marked "unknown," I was amazed to discover that someone there has visited more than once. Of course, I'd love to know where the unknowns are too.

I'm not sure if this means anything other than that some people must spend hours "surfing" the Net. Witness the You Tube videos that arrive in your e-mail that make you wonder how anyone found them in the hundreds produced every week. Still--I'd love to have some of these readers let me meet them through a comment (pro or con).

In our years when my late husband was an international sales manager for a company that made a unique product, we met many people from many places, and made friends of a dozen or more. Those days are long gone, so I can't help wondering who's venturing into western North Carolina to read something here...and more than that, why.