Following people is harder than it sounds!

Here on Blogger anyway.

I wanted to subscribe to other people's blogs rather than be isolated here on my own, so I went to my profile and clicked on one of my interests: gothic fiction. 15 matches came up. Which sounded great, because that's not an overwhelming number and I figured they'd all have tons in common with me and I could add pretty much all of them. (For a supposed pessimist, I tend to plow into new endeavors with an alarming degree of naive optimism. Like what happened when I started applying for teaching jobs.)

Then I started looking at profiles. And out of that promising fifteen, I ended up adding only one of the matches.

Here are a few of the reactions I had while browsing through the other fourteen profiles.

Mother of (yikes that's a lot of) kids! Okay...I mean, that's great. I'm happy that you're happy being a parent. But I'm about as non-maternal as they get without eating my young (of which I have none, for obvious reasons). I'm rather W.C. Fields when it comes to offspring. And there are some parents whose love for their children borders on obsession and whose blog is a neverending chronicle of their children's every syllable and bowel movement. I'm not accusing any of the aforementioned bloggers of this, but I have a veeeerrry low tolerance for kid-centric posts. It may surprise you that I'm a stepmother and that I've initiated my share of online kid discussions too. But I'm also very invested in my decision not to spawn biologically, and I just don't have the same mental processes as the more devoted mothers out there. If you can go an entire entry, or preferably several entries, without waxing poetic about your kids, that'll work just fine. Otherwise, I'm off to the kid-free zone.

Prayers! Bible quotes! A whole lotta religion! Again, I respect your beliefs and your faith. But I'm an agnostic and I can't remember the last time I was in the mood for an inspirational message, let alone proseletysing. I also hate to debate. That's why I share my religious views on a blog rather than a forum, but even blogs include comments. And at this point in time, I'm not interested in debating abortion rights, the existence of life after death, whether or not ghosts are actually demons, the supposed sinful nature of masturbation, or anything else that devoutely religious people and non-devout people tend to disagree on. Respect my beliefs and I'll respect yours....that's not a stance that tends to jive with the "comment" option.

You're in middle school?! Or high school! In other words, you're under 18. And while I'd otherwise love to add you since we have so many shared interests, it might not look too good if your parents decided to check out your Blogger friends and discovered that at least one of them is a thirty-ish woman who drops the F bomb and talks about s-e-x and v-i-o-l-e-n-c-e. I know I'm new to Blogger and all, but I've already mentioned masturbation in this post and that's only a hint of things to come.


I've had a bit more luck with members who share my love for abandoned buildings. And fortunately I have more than a few interests, so there may be hope for me yet...