The Story of My Breakup with Myhero OR To Respond or Not To Respond That is the Question

I have been blogging for less than a year.

Before I wrote my first post though, as I am sure many new bloggers do, I decided to check out other blogs.

Right off the bat, and I have a feeling this has also happened to most new bloggers, I found a blogger who seemed to speak directly to me.  (From now on, in order to protect the innocent, I shall refer to this blogger as "Myhero" or maybe at times, just plain "M".)

Myhero's writing style was unique, the posts were relatable and M was an excellent writer.
M tapped into my imagination.  When I would read M's descriptions of wilderness walks,  I felt the warmth or coolness of the day, I caught scent of the wild lilacs, was thrilled by sightings of a rare bird and experienced the peace and quite of being among nature. It was as though I was walking right along with M.

Through Myhero's writings I began to learn more and more about the life of this blogger.  I was quite impressed with the accomplishments of this person.  In fact, Myhero and I might have developed a friendship in the real world.

Needless to say I became one of Myhero's many followers.


Occasionally,  and as you see I stressed the word occasionally, I would leave a comment on one of M's posts.

One of the nice things about Myhero was that each and every comment was acknowledged with a thoughtful response.

In March of this year I wrote my first post.  I have been posting regularly since then.

One day Myhero casually mentioned something in a post regarding a personality trait.  One which Myhero was not very proud of and was often teased about.

I couldn't believe it.  Myhero and I shared this very same personality trait.  In fact,  just days before I had written a whole post about this very same thing.  This trait is not a serious affliction,  but can be annoying at times.

I thought, wow, another thing that Myhero and I have in common.

I just had to let Myhero know about this common bond.

So I left a comment with a link to my post which contained information about this trait.

I thoughtfully, thought that M would appreciate the information that I had found out and might even get a chuckle out of it.

But, I received no acknowledgment to my comment.

How strange I thought.

Myhero had acknowledged every other person's comment on this particular post, but glaringly ignored my comment.

Figuring that M might have just missed my comment I waited a few days and checked back.  Still no response.

I was very hurt.  Did I do something to offend M?

I had always been very complimentary and polite with all of my previous comments.   I only commented when I felt that I had something positive to contribute.

The only thing I could think of was that leaving a link to my post was a violation of some unwritten
Blogging rule which apparently was unbeknownst to me.

So acting out in a purely emotional, perfectly irrational, and I admit pretty immature way, I took my name off of M's follower's list.

The next day, I decided to checked back one more time and found that my comment and link to my post had been deleted from the comment section of Myhero's post.

This incident happened just a couple of months after I started blogging myself.  At the time, I was a newborn and my posts and writing were in their infancy stages.   And apparently so was my knowledge of Blogging Etiquette.

Since that incident I have not read any of Myhero's posts.

I think I have sufficiently matured now, though.   After all I am almost one year old in my blogging experience.

 I  guess that enough time has passed to ease the pain of my break up with M.
Perhaps I will give Myhero another chance.

Now I don't know if these are official Blogging Etiquette rules, but the rule about not putting a link to your personal blog in the comment section of another person's blog made this list.

I write my blog to process my thoughts.  I write to examine my feelings.  I write because it is a coping mechanism for me.

Along the way it seems that others are interested in what I have to say.   I must shyly admit that it feels good to be recognized.  Comments encourage me to keep on writing.

I still haven't figured out whether it is proper etiquette to acknowledge each and every comment, but I do look forward to them and appreciate each and every one.

And I guess I should recall how it felt when Myhero ignored one of my comments.