blogging is beneficial

After just a tad over a month as a member of the mental health blogging community I can say with a high degree of certainty that loneliness is one of the most common and distressing problems many of us face. My blogging has, I believe, helped me at least as much as the antidepressants and the diet and exercise routine. (I haven’t been as faithful to either eating right or walking as I’d like. It’s going to have to get just a little warmer. Plus, with the time change coming …) I actually feel like I know some people (now) and have some friends. According to The Benefits of Blogging, my perceived benefit from blogging is fairly typical, especially for people who view their social situation similarly. (Hat tip to starbirdcanada.)

Grandiose fellow that I am, I thought I’d share a couple of my blogging “tips and tricks”. Most of you are probably doing some or all of this. Still, I wanted to put it out there, should someone be curious. If you have any ideas you’d like to share, leave a comment, or better yet, write them up as a post on your blog and link back here.

First, I’ve gleaned from my stats that many of you are using an aggregator. (Feed reader may be the preferred term now.) Obviously some of you aren’t. With an aggregator, you can read most if not all of your web stuff from one place. I haven’t kept up with the technology. Back in the day it was XML feeds. Then it became RFD. Today it’s RSS and ATOM. I’m a big Google fan, and probably will be until the authorities show and up cart me off for my surfing practices, so I use the Google Reader. Best case scenario, I can read all your posts right there in my aggregator. Worst case, I can scan a few words or sentences, and if I’m interested, click directly to the post from my Reader. It save lots of time and makes it easy to categorize and organize stuff pretty much however you want. Click on the image below and it’ll link to a page with a bigger picture so you can get an idea of what I’m trying to describe here.

One of the cool features is the ability to easily share your favorite posts, stories, articles, etc., with your friends. Every post you choose to share will be displayed on your own personal page. I think you can pretty much share an infinite number of posts, and while I’m not sure there’s a way to search or label them, there probably is. Here’s my favs page, as I choose to call it. (There’s’ also a link in my sidebar.) While I can’t swear it’s a useful thing, it has the potential to be a fun thing. (And I guess that makes it useful.)

Lately I’ve begun to venture beyond the world of WordPress.com. That presents the problem of trying to keep up with where I’ve left comments. I found Co.omments and have been using it for a few days. The interface is a tad clunky and sometimes the server is slow and even unreachable, but I’m confident those issues will soon be resolved. (It’s pretty obvious they know what they’re doing over there.) Not only can I track my comments from throughout the blogosphere, but I can do so in my Google Reader. So far I’m not doing that, but that day is coming. Additionally, you can share your comment trail with your readers either as an RSS feed or with a link to your personal page. It, or something similar, is essential equipment, at least for me. (My Co.omment feed is in my sidebar.)

If you’re using Firefox you’re probably aware of some of the wonderful plugins that make your surfing life easier and/or more fun. I’ve just started using Resizeable Textarea. With it you can resize things like the tiny comment area provided on some blogs. That way, you can read your whole comment without having to scroll back and forth. It’s a tad tricky to use but once you get the hang of it, it seems to work well. Here’s a demo that’ll get you started.

That’s it for this edition of tips and tricks. And remember, blogging is good for you, so keep on blogging!