Roseyland

The votes are in, and it looks like the overwhelming winner is: “Am I In The Women’s Restroom Of The Internet?”. I have to admit, I am completely unprepared to write this post. I honestly thought everybody would vote for oatmeal fudge bars. The oatmeal fudge bars are delicious by the way, and if you had voted for them, not only would I have made them and blogged about them, but I also would have personally delivered an oatmeal fudge bar to each and every one of you. But I guess you would rather read about the women’s restroom. Freaks.

I started this blog a little over six months ago. I’m still not exactly sure why I decided to start blogging, but I think there are three main reasons:

1. I was really getting into Twitter, and everybody on Twitter had a blog, so I figured I should have one too.
2. I actually already had a group blog with some friends from college, but it suffered from apathy, so I decided to kill it and resurrect it as my own personal blog.
3. In college, my quadmates and I used to stay up late having these intense debates about religion, politics, whether there were more cars driving around with bowling balls in them vs. 20 pound bags of flour (long story), whether or not more people knew who Tom Osborn was vs. Phil Jackson (don’t even get me started), etc… I miss these debates, and the farther and farther I get from college, the less and less comfortable I am discussing politics, religion, and bowling balls in real life. So this blog is a place for me to express my thoughts without worrying too much about what other people think.

So after a few months, I was getting into this blogging thing. I was witting posts, reading other blogs, and interacting with a few other bloggers through Twitter and blog comments. Then one day I looked up and realized that I was surrounded by women. Suddenly, I felt like the only guy at a Tupperware party. Do they still have Tupperware parties? You know what I love? Statistics. Let’s do some stats.

1. Of the 32 comments to my blog, 3 are from men and 29 are from women. That is over 90% female for all you non-math majors.
2. Of the 23 personal blogs I have listed under St. Louis Blogs on the right, 15 are by women and 8 are by men. That is 65% female, but I have to admit, I tried to include more blogs by guys, so that I wouldn’t look like a stalker or anything.
3. Of the last 60 @ replies I have on Twitter, 28 are from men and 32 are from women. Okay, so that is pretty even, but I swear it feels like there are more women on Twitter.

When I first realized that I was surrounded by women, I became self conscious. Was I trying to join* a group that didn’t really want me? Is blogging like a scrap booking party, or a Pampered Chef party, or a sex toy party? Is blogging the women’s restroom of the internet? Is this paragraph offensive to women? Probably.

My conclusion: I don’t have one. In reality, I think I knew that more bloggers were women than men before I even started. I seem to remember CNN doing a report about this a few years ago. At the time, I didn’t really know what blogging was, so I just filed that little tid bit of information away in the not so deep recesses of my mind. I do feel like blogging brings a certain balance to my life. I am an engineer, and I spend 50 hours of my week surrounded by men. Middle aged men who have 2.5 kids, live in St. Charles county, and like to talk about sports, their lawn, and the weather. I love my job, and I love the people I work with, but everyone needs balance. Maybe blogging while surrounded by a plethora of female bloggers helps me find that balance. Or maybe, deep down inside, I secretly want to be a woman. Yeah, I’m going with balance on this one, definitely balance.

Thoughts? Opinions? Do you wish I had blogged about oatmeal fudge bars now?

*Initially I used the phrase “insert myself into” instead of the word join. This um, just didn’t sound right. It was kind of funny though, so I included this note.

The image in this post is “Women’s restroom sign” by eszter and is licensed under creative commons.