I used to have a blogroll. This is what my sidebars looked like when I first had a blog. (Becca will remember this! Anyone else?) I don’t know why it’s making the font white — you have to highlight the whole page to see the type but you can see the sidebars.

This was before everybody and their mother had a blog so most of my links were other sites and then down at the bottom, the few bloggers I read.

Then blogging got busy. I couldn’t keep up. I pretty much added anyone who ever commented to my links-list. I moved it from the sidebar to its own page and tried to keep it organized. The blogosphere mushroomed so quickly that it was hard to keep up.

Then I realized it was a giant mess so I just asked people to tell me their blogs and I’d link to ‘em, no questions asked. But someone posted their link and someone else wrote to me off-list and said, “You can’t link her! She wrote XYZ once! You can’t condone that with a link!”

And that’s when I said screw it because I can’t be responsible for every single thing every single person I read says. Maybe this was the first time someone outright said, “don’t condone her with a link!” but it wasn’t the first or last time someone held me responsible for what someone else in my orbit said.

That’s why I use my google reader to share specific posts I find thought-provoking or inspiring or interesting and said to hell with the link list.

Friendships can be political anyway (they demand such loyalty!) but in the sometimes heated world of blogging and the sometimes even more heated world of adoption blogging, it’s too easy to get mired in some debate even when you’re trying to stand on the sidelines. To a certain point, I accept that and really don’t mind it much but it does preclude me having a blogroll.

By the way, I’ll have been blogging EIGHT YEARS come January 1st. Isn’t that nuts?