blogging brainstorm

if you have found this post (either because i lured you here or accidentally) please read on through my rambles so you can give me some advice! i'm at a blogging cross roads...

i'm not in very many photos. usually this is by design but then there are times when i feel resentful i'm always behind the camera and wish my friends and family would offer to get me in shots (yeah, i know, i can't expect to have it both ways...like usually i don't want to be in photos and then suddenly they should know when i do want to be in them?)...anyway, recently i posted some idyllic photos of sea spinning around in her "ballerina princess fairy" skirt in wonderful sunlight on warm hardwood floors...i had trouble moving past that post which is another (yet related) topic...this was one of the shots my husband took and i love it because i didn't know he was getting me on film (i prefer photojournalistic to posed shots) and sea just looks so into what she is doing, like she doesn't care who is watching her...

i digress...

this morning sometime before 5, my two children decided they are both going through a growth spurt and needed to nurse out of control. usually i am a very heavy sleeper and can whack out my back to accommodate this and then go back to sleep. this morning i was having a fair number of anxiety dreams anyway and after i got the children to sleep around 6:45 i was just UP but in a good, fully energized even without coffee sorta way. so i decided to go with it. i even had strong opinions and questions and analyses (is that how you spell the plural of "analysis"?) on my mind...something worth writing about and the time to do it! wow! a crazy combination i am not familiar with (i know, when my children are off to school and i have oodles of time i will look back and miss the days of them hanging from me and wanting to spend every second with me)

i'm digressing again...i usually do that...in paragraph run-on sentence form...

i'm going to try and put more spaces between my ideas, though...

so maybe i'll start with my questions for you if you don't want to read on through my rambles...answer any or all of them...whichever ones move you or apply to you or you'd like to share your thoughts/experiences...i'm asking new and old bloggers, "big" (active with lots of comments) and small...friends, locals, mommies, random, you name it...so if you read through any comments i do get on this topic, they should be pretty diverse!

1. why do you blog?
2. why did you originally start blogging? have your reasons changed?
3. how often do you blog? does this vary?
4. do you have a routine of any sorts when you make time to blog or just when you have time/are moved to do so?
5. how often do you read other blogs?
6. how do you choose which blogs to read?
7. do you follow any? do you define follow as adding yourself to their list and checking your reader when you are reading blogs in general or do you literally read every post they write?
8. how often do you comment on blogs?
9. how do you "thank" people for commenting on your blog? here are some choices: immediate reply on your blog after their comment; personal e-mail; writing a thank-you on their blog as a comment; commenting on their blog to "indirectly" thank them; none of the above; no thanks
10. do you stay on top of comments? i.e. always thank/comment for a comment for every commenter? does this ever feel insincere and if so how have you solved that?
11. how do you encourage meaningful comments? i.e. i'd like to have friends or at least people who care about me giving me advice or answering questions i have instead of just "cute photo" which is often what i feel like i need to resort to as alluded to in #10
12. do you blog more for yourself (to keep a record of your life, to figure things out) or do you account for what your readers might want to hear about when choosing what to blog about?
13. do you have ongoing themes (mommy, art, photos) or is your blog more random?
14. when you get in a funk and don't feel like blogging (for a LONG time) how do you keep your readers? get back in the mix? catch up with blogs you used to follow?
15. have you ever made a fellow blogger upset and how has that affected you or what happened? i believe i did this one time and i still haven't "researched" it to figure out how/why...i think i inadvertently "un-followed" her when i changed one blog i was following to "private" (i didn't like the content of several of her posts and wasn't sure if i was going to continue following this blog or not)...another theory i have is that she is someone who blogs every day and for while she was my best commenter...literally commenting every post i wrote...though i loved this, i got nervous because i wasn't sure if i was supposed to do the same with her and i didn't want to leave insincere comments just to comment
16. do you list blogs you follow on your blog? i've really wanted to spread the love this way but worry what if i only kinda like some of these or these bloggers stop blogging regularly and what about all the other blogs i kinda follow and won't those people feel left out? i feel like my favorite blogs are often "big" already and don't need any extra love spreading and though these blogs say something about me and i don't mind directing readers there, i'd rather list friends or smaller blogs but these people can sometimes go months between posts? how do you balance all these things?
17. i'm already over this topic so i suppose i can't expect you to read and respond to more than 17 questions...maybe when you comment below you could just summarize your blogging journey, include some experiences with my questions and then share where you are at now? or just answer one or two of my questions...any other advice/opinions you have?

i started this blog shortly before story was born...it was almost entirely for myself, to get down my anxiety about "waiting" for him to arrive and the unknown of having two children. i was fortunate to have a supportive mommy group who commented regularly and gave me advice and i didn't realize that isn't something that just happens with blogs. so i should have nurtured those commenters (not just as friends, but on their blogs as well)...now i think very few of my local friends even read my blog so it is kind of strange to have strangers know more about me in some ways? how do you feel about that?

my husband is up and now frustrated because the house is messy and we have a lot to do this morning and i'm looking at it like i have "free" time before my alarm was going to go off and before the kids wake up...but these parenting/relationship issues are for another post for sure! anyway, i'd love your feedback and hopefully i'll get to visit a bunch of blogs tonight to recruite comments! thanks for dropping by and being part of my blogging community!