About 10 or so weeks ago, I wrote a piece asking for different questions from people who read this section. I had a lot of different intentions behind it, and things came out fairly interesting. Not only did I get a lot of thought-provoking (as well as a couple outright difficult) questions, but it was a lot of fun for me to write up the answers. Not only did I get to think about some things, but I think that for those who asked the questions (as well as possibly those reading the site) got a little more insight to my thought processes and beliefs.

I was thinking about those two particular pieces again this last week and looking through the questions again and I realized that not only did one person ask several questions, but all of the questions that were asked came from people that I already knew fairly well either through e-mail or in real life. While I appreciated that I had some people checking my site on a regular basis, I realized that I was also somewhat sad that nobody else out there that read the piece didn't feel like submitting something.

In terms of being a lurker (my definition for those who read sites, but never attempt to contact the person behind them), I know that I've been guilty of doing it more than once. My biggest problem in not wanting to write people used to be that I usually feel like they were usually in a different league than me. Because I either enjoyed their writing or their photography or whatever else, I ended up going to their site again and again, but when I didn't write them I ended up feeling like a groupie who adores but never comments.

Over the years, I sort of grew out of this habit, not because I started feeling like I was any better than anyone else, but because I knew how I felt when I got an e-mail from someone (no matter how short) about my site. It didn't matter if it was one line telling me that they thought I was indeed almost cool, or whether I got a longer, detailed e-mail explaining that something I'd written had resonated with someone. Even the few times that I've gotten a really mean piece of mail, I had to smile knowing that the person felt enough by something they say at my site to sit down and tell me about it. Basically, I resolved that whenever I was moved by a site in a good way, I'd drop the person a note and tell them that.

On occassion, the person writes back, and in other instances I've even gotten into extended e-mail conversations with people, simply because I bridged that gap. In essence, that's what I do my site for, is for the hopes of meeting like-minded people and just having conversations about things. It doesn't matter that we're not talking about saving the world or if we're discussing something so simple as the people that we have crushes on, it's that communication with people literally all over the world that drives me to do my site.

With that, I'm going to ask for questions from you, the readers again. As mentioned above, there is absolutely no reason that if you have something you want to know, you shouldn't ask it. I don't care if it's something silly, serious, or anything else. As I did last time, I'll answer the questions in next weeks installment (coming on the 5th, as I'm going to be on vacation for a short bit). Do you want to know anything?

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