I was blogging in 1968.
We called it correspondence in those days because webs were something to be vacuumed away, portable computers required cranes to lift and email was just a typo of the feminine gender.
But as the saying goes, "they can because they don't know any better".
So I went ahead and blogged my way well into the 70s.
I had a list of people who read my blog entries.
I had to push the information to them by writing the message over and over on this stuff called paper.
Then I would encase each individual message in a non-virtual envelope and write the destination on the outside making sure to include a ZIP code in order to enhance the speed of delivery.
Finally I would use a system run by a former branch of the U.
S.
Government (referred to as the Post Office Department) to transmit the message.
I would cast my letter into a POD box that could be found on most any street corner and, as if by magic, my blog entry would race through the usPOD network and appear in the hands of my readers within days, even if that reader was hundreds of miles away.
Getting my readers to comment on or even acknowledge they had received my latest entry was not the easiest thing to do.
Most were content to read my updates and only say something when they felt a new entry was long overdue.
My blog peaked out at about 30 readers in 1975 when I graduated from college.
My priorities shifted as I started to earn a living and raise a family and the time to blog was nowhere to be found.
As the years went by I would come in direct contact with each of my readers.
At some point in our conversation they would recall their favorite entry and then they would thank me for including them in my social network.
Their remarks encouraged me and I started stealing time from sleep in order to write a lone entry to a lone reader two or three times a year.
In the mid 80s, I started sending out an annual blog entry at Christmas.
My list of thirty readers had grown to over 100 and ten years later I had almost 300.
Some of them started their own holiday blogs using a duplicated newsletter, but I continued to handwrite a personalized message on for each reader until it became impossible to keep up.
usPOD blogging's time had passed.
Today, my readership is well beyond 300 and I make a new written communication available to them once a week.
Those who want a more personalized message send me an email and I respond.
A few may comment, but the vast majority of my readers still prefer to not even acknowledge their presence on my blog, but that's okay with all the bells and whistles available to my website, I know they are there.
I have resisted moving to audio and video "PODcasts" because I feel the written word establishes a stronger connection with a reader, than a video establishes with a viewer or a recorded voice with a listener.
This is not to say I am not planning to create audio and video messages.
I will just use these mediums to communicate messages that need to be seen and heard not read.
There are now over 70 million blogs.
This is just under 1% of the world's population, but it's still a hell of a lot more communication going on than there was 40 years ago when I started.
It does make you wonder, though, just what it is we are all writing and/or talking about.
I can't speak for any of the others, but ALL of my entries have been aimed at sharing a significant experience with someone who could benefit by avoiding, pursuing, commiserating or celebrating a similar experience in their lives.
Somehow I think, maybe that's what Ben Franklin had in mind when he became the first "master" of the usPOD.