Bye, Bye Blog...Hello Loneliness?

I've been thinking...

If you start any sentence in our home with that phrase you immediately get laughed at and probably have someone write down the date and time.

But, it is true. I have been debating departing from the blogging community. When I started this blog, I needed a place to safely vent. My home was gone, my life had been turned upside down, and there were roadblocks in every direction. This blog allowed me to express myself and eventually gave me several blogging "friends" that were willing to laugh at or with me. You people saved me in a multitude of ways without even knowing me. I thank each and every one of you!

The anonymity was very purposeful. I had been warned that if I was going to rage about our school system, I needed to do so anonymously. I left the school topics behind fairly quickly and continued to blog as Laughingmom - eventually even posting my aging mug for the "world" or about 7 bloggers to see.

Lately I have had no voice or really any desire to write a post. I have in the past year participated in three month-long challenges, two with photographs and one where I actually had to write. These were without a doubt the most enjoyable experiences that I have had in my blogging adventure. This was due entirely to the interactions that I had with fellow participants and others who read and commented. After each challenge, though, I have had nothing to inspire me to post. I do read posts from other bloggers, but find it too time consuming to read the hundreds of entries in my feed every day. I rarely check my stats as they don't interest me, but every so often I check to see if my anonymous and most faithful reader from Pierre, SD is still checking in on me. Thanks, whoever you are...

I have debated joining the madness on Facebook for years and that may actually be the path that I now take. The real issue that I had previously was trying to keep my real and my blogging identities separate. I'm not seeing that as being a problem now, as I would just be me and leave Laughingmom behind.

My attention was piqued when I saw that a retailer that I follow on Twitter was giving a better discount to those who saw their ad on social media than to those who get their e-mails. How much of this am I missing? I have such mixed feelings about Facebook. My kids don't even use it. My husband has an account only for a business reason. And I still harbor a lot of negative feelings about our fire being posted on-line before we even had first responders arrive. Sure, there are pluses and minuses associated with all social media, I just need the good to outweigh the bad.

I value all of your thoughts and suggestions. I know that all of this social internet is a huge time suck, whether it is Twitter, Facebook, or blog feeds, I'm just looking for some middle ground.

Should I stop thinking now?