Is this the ruination of us all?

I mean this, right here, this blog - and all other blogs - and the Internet in general.

Finding that I, for the most part, spend more time on this blog than I do on work that nets me an actual profit, I realized the other day that maybe it is (or ultimately will be) the ruination of me. If it can be so negatively categorized.

And I have to think that many of the people who read my blog are doing so at work.

Speaking about the former point with a friend yesterday, he pointed out that professional bloggers can make big bucks off their blogs.

The thing is, do I have the inclination (or even the savvy) to be a "professional" blogger? I mean, maintaining a blog that will attract thousands upon thousands of visitors and make it so I have to hire people to moderate comments for me?

(As the weeks crawled by after I started this blog, I remember one night looking at SiteMeter and saying "Come on!" when the hit count for that day was at 99. When it finally turned over to 100, I was overjoyed.)

I check this blog in between calls I'm making for a story; I respond to comments left on here more readily than I return calls having to do with actual income.

I feel about me being a professional blogger the same way I feel about me writing a successful book: no way, Jose.

I'm a little angry that the mayor (or Lois) never returned my calls about the Wood Waste preliminary injunction in Everett. More angry than I am at someone who hasn't returned my calls about a story I'm doing, for which my deadline is tomorrow.

So then I start thinking about when I first heard about AOL, and chat rooms. Once I was on, I was on, baby ... I checked for messages before I left for work, I checked during work, it was the first thing I did when I got home from work. I had more "friends" on AOL than I had in my real life.

In an AOL chat room is where I met my last boyfriend (hey, it worked for nearly 9 years). I knew a couple, with her in NH and him in Scotland ... he flew over here to meet her, and he IM'd me about how nervous he was, and how he feared he wouldn't be able to find her at the airport; and I was telling him how to get to where she said she'd be standing, knowing the international terminal at Logan Airport as I did.

Then there was this other guy, who was in the military out west somewhere (I forget where). He was leaving the military and had been offered a job here in Mass. I was giving him names of realtors and suggesting towns where he and his family could settle in.

I gave him my work phone number and told him to call me if his business ever brought him to Boston, and we could have lunch. He never did.

There were a host of men and women that I "talked" to every day, shared thoughts with, consoled or was consoled ... only ever met the one.

I lost track of all of the others, so I don't know what ultimately happened with any of them.

That's the thing, you see, you lose track of people when they're not actually present in your life.

So back to ruination. I don't know the answer to this question, either (if I knew, I would tell you). The Internet, and blogs, is where I get most, if not all, of my information. It's not necessarily where I get my friends (or lovers) anymore, but it's a big part of my life.

I just spent nearly an hour writing this post, for example ...