Seems a little silly for a blogger to be blogging about... blogging, but I think we all have one or two posts in us as to why we do it.

For those of you who haven't already heard the story, Girl on the Right was born in February of 2004 after I, Wendy, was kicked off a forum of otherwise charming and interesting women who could not bear to question the appropriateness of maternity leave or paid days off while one looked after one's children. We had been having such a discussion when I - not knowing a right wing from a left wing from an airplane wing - said that I didn't feel it was a company's responsibility to pay for your children. They kicked me off. It was the first time I encountered the intolerance of the tolerant left. It would not be the last.

And so I became RightGirl, the conservative with a heart of gold - haha. I wanted to see if there were others out there like me. I wanted to know if my thoughts were "normal", even if they weren't popular. Turns out there are thousands, if not millions, of bloggers - both male and female - who feel the same about things as I do. Not just about the politics of breeding, but about government, safety, national security, and my pet topic: Islam. This blog has been an outlet, a safety net, and a means to connect for over two years. Through it I became a member of the Cotillion. You may notice that as a group we don't post as much as we used to. It doesn't mean the Cotillion has ceased to exist. It just means that we've shifted to private conversations in our email group and on the phone. We have a network of medical professionals, lawyers, mothers, techs, and most of all friends at our disposal 24 hours a day, seven days a week. If one of us is in trouble, a team is dispatched to deal with it. Phone bills be damned, we look after our own! To me, this is the very best of blogging: the connections you make with real life people. Blogging doesn't have to be insular.

But not everything is ribbons and bows. There are the dissenters who - in my opinion - usually deserve a response. I try not to delete or ban commenters unless I have run out of other options. If you come here spewing nonsense and hatred, you will usually be ignored or made fun of (although I don't like to feed the trolls, either). If you make a valid point or contribute something to the topic of discussion, someone (me or another reader) will usually respond. I enjoy those volleys back and forth between two people of opposing opinions. What I do not enjoy is the death threats, the hate mail, and the creeps. The internet, like real life, is full of them. Are they enough to make me quit? No. Are they enough to keep me on my toes, with security experts, law enforcement, legal counsel and the like on speed dial? You bet. I still have to live my life, and I won't allow myself to be crippled by creeps any more than I will allow myself to be crippled by jihadis. But like with the jihadis, I pay attention to my instincts, and I try to be careful.

So that's some of the good and some of the bad of what blogging has been for me. It's a long, roundabout way of getting to the "other". "Other" refers to all those little mistakes along the way, and the people who don't clearly fit a category. Like waking up to find your alter-ego has been written up in the National Post as a bigot in an echo chamber. Like getting the facts completely wrong in an article posted on another, larger website, and having to take the heat for it. The "other" is a learning experience. It is also the shit you have to clean off your metaphorical carpet after getting mixed up in a blog war, whether directly or indirectly. It is people like Ian Scott, who live to be a thorn in your side (backside, actually), and you just have to learn to deal with them. I had attempted on more than one occasion to block Ian from commenting here at GOTR, but it appears that the ban did not go through, probably through my own error. Not to silence him, but because he actually contributes nothing to the conversation. His comments are pithy and pointless, and personal in a way that is unnecessary. He is the grown-up, web equivelant to the boy in the schoolyard who would make jokes about your mother to get a rise out of you. Moreover, he would then go back and write about my personal life on his own blog, knowing only what I've chosen to share with you, my readers. He could not possibly know more, as even I haven't figured Wendy out completely, and even I cannot pass judgement on myself yet.

But is Ian a threat, or a nuisance? Honestly, I don't know. I know very little about him, just as he knows little about me. So how can I turn around and say he has no right to pass judgement on me, and then pass judgement on him? Rather hypocritical, isn't it? For those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about (and probably no interest, but hey, it's my blog), I made a random comment last week on Let Freedom Reign (here's the post, with my comment) referring to Ian as a stalker. He may or may not be amused to know that I also refer to some of my top clients as stalkers (to their faces) for the amount of times they call me in a day and amount of grief they give me, but hey-ho, looks like he wouldn't be that amused after all. Ian got angry. Full on, vein-popping-in-the-forehead angry, and took me to task on it. Some have said "he doth protest too much", but it is his right to defend himself, if he felt he needed defending.

And so, as Beth would say, I'm gonna "put on my big girl panties and deal". I'm going to suck it up, that bitter pill, and extend my apologies to Ian, especially since once the haze of anger cleared, he came directly to me and made his case like a gentleman. And as a gentleman, I apologize for not thinking before I spoke. Please accept this as my formal retraction of my comment, Ian. It's over.

No, you won't see Ian around here at GOTR, as I have asked him to please find somewhere else to go, and he has agreed, which I appreciate. With any luck he will also find something else to blog about other than yours truly. We can only hope.