The life-affirmingness of blogland

Wobbly? Unsure? Say so in your blog post.

Readers will sympathise, tell you encouraging tales of having come through exactly the same feelings, triumphant. They may offer advice, they may tell you in no uncertain terms what to do. But they won't leave you to wobble alone.

Want to move but don't know where? Say so in your blog post.

Readers will offer a range of lovely alternatives, with reasons, thereby expanding your limited grasp of the geography of our country. They may even say heart-warming things like "I'd love you for a neighbour" - perhaps because you've never let on that you play the drums* and are just learning the violin**. And like to sunbathe nude in the back garden.***

Having a down day where everything feels too big, too overwhelming, too challenging for a blogger of little brain? Say so in your blog post.

Readers will rush to reassure and comfort, and you will be left feeling that you are right to try, and that all will turn out well in the end.

And then, after you have made some firm blog-friends, and exchanged emails and little gifts, you venture into actually talking on the phone. And the virtual friendship, already valued, starts to take on a real live form. You laugh, exchange stories and views, you ask after each other from a basis of shared knowledge, and you think "It's time I met this very nice, funny, warm person."

And you make a plan to do just that.

And that night you go to bed feeling that all the past months of insecurity, worry and challenge and the need for information, guidance, reassurance and support are behind you, and that you are standing on the threshold of a new venture with friends waiting to welcome you.

*/**/*** = big fibs