Look At Me, I Can Be Centerfield

Bill Braine from Exurbitude (who introduced himself to me at BlogHer's Friday night reception, saying he'd recognized me from my picture - thanks for that, Bill!) points out something that I don't usually think much about, but it's true:

Of all the things I learned in San Francisco, the one that applies here is that blogging differs from writing, which I’ve been doing all along. Blogging demands more, and writing is just the centerpiece to a world of commenting, flickring, twittering, emailing…what we call building virtual community.

This goes with an insight I had when Sarah was speaking at a panel. She said, "my twitter community, my livejournal community, my blog community", and it gave me a new angle on my own communities: I'm not just a part of a vast community. I am the center of those communities that form around me. They're MINE. I OWN this. I've been blogging for seven years, and I only just got around to noticing this. Yeah, I'm a little slow sometimes.