My habit.

We'll start with the one who is to blame, er, who got me started. And it wasn't through cajoling me to begin blogging, or an unintended result of the endless debate of where the comma should go in "Hillbilly, Please", if it should have a comma at all.

I have Jag to thank for the blog monkey on my back. Way back in the day, as the kids say, when we dwelled in cubicles together, she turned me on to lileks.com.
Now this was in the prehistoric era, the dawn of the interweb. From there I moved on to notmydesk.com (now defunct), and became a casual, recreational reader of blogs.

Then the blog epidemic swept the world and suddenly they were cheap, plentiful, and thrilling to read. But I didn't get hooked, man, I mean, I only read them during my lunch hour, or if someone sent me a link.

Then Jag started dealing. Next thing I know, Hillbilly, Please (see link in sidebar because I'm too lazy to embed it here...) is my first stop in the morning. I don't even check my email first.
Can you blame me? The woman is damn smart. I know her as a dear friend/suspected cousin so can vouch for the brilliance you read in her prolific posts. I hit her site multiple times a day, hoping for an update, a new photo, anything to keep me going until the next post.

And I ain't goin' to rehab, no, no, no.

Her blog literally changed my life (and I don't think she knows this story). Via the comments to her posts I came to "know" a number of other smart, funny, articulate bloggers. Via their blogs and comments posted by others, I discovered hundreds of different opinions, voices, and perspectives across the world. This exposure eventually guided my studies and shaped my thesis research on how blogs extend Entman's theory of framing in mass communication (yawn, I know - but comm geeks like me salivate over crap like this...)

I'm quite the extrovert anyway - people fascinate me and I love nothing better than hearing their stories and perspectives. Blogs are my crack, and Jag is my dealer on speed dial. If you are reading this, you undoubtedly arrived here via Jagosaurus. Here's to keeping her on the streets, wheeling and dealing, and educating us all in her brilliant, funny way.