Blogging on Thin Ice

So Blog-by-the-book blocked me today. I think had to do with me reading his blog. I'm not sure if his problem is with my reading his blog, or with my then talking to him about it. I mean, I don't actually comment on the actual blog - rather I just commented on something that happened to him that I simply learned about in the blog. Either way, it's clearly a problem, and while I don't particularly understand the situation, I do understand that it's time to grant some blogspace where it has been requested. So, from now on, for a while anyway, I will do my best to refrain from visiting said blog.

The thing is, I'm kinda disappointed. I had really started enjoying it, checking it often, hoping for new posts, even getting annoyed when there weren't any new posts. And it wasn't just because I knew who was sitting behind that blog, writing those posts; the blog had an appeal, it had issues, problems, success, failures. It wasn't like this blog. When I stop and really think about how it isn't like this blog, I can begin to see that it wouldn't work if it were. The publicity and privacy of a blog is a feature of a blog that is as unique as the blog itself. When I look at it that way, I realize that when I alter the perceived public format of a blog other than my own, as, unwittingly, I have done, it is really no different than altering the very blog itself - a cardinal sin of blogging. Ah, that's it. He didn't say I had broken the first commandment, it was that I had committed a cardinal sin. I stand by my opinion that, for my own blog, I determine the rules, and I have not committed a foul. But, with regards to someone else's blog, I have indeed acted wrongly. A blog must be given it's autonomy, and a writer, his sovereignty. I'm not sure if he will ever read this, but, I offer my apologies to the Blog-Nazi. Nevertheless, my cider house will make its own rules, and the blogger-of-strong-convictions is still a fascist.