14, though? If I’m taking the spirit of your words in the right way, I’d be hesitant to concede that one.

Sure, we’ll all get knocked (I got slammed before I even started blogging, just from an article I wrote), but part of the journey, as I see it, is to learn how to experience those kinds of blows, and re-open our hearts as quickly as we can.

Callouses on our spirit only hurt us, by limiting our freedom to love… and don’t stop the slings and arrows.

My $.02, at least.

1. Responsibility
2. The urge to rant instinctively.

To me, with just that, everything else comes naturally. You learn because you read more and you keep your writing within limits of right and wrong, you meet people who come to you because of the way you write and most importantly, when you believe that no one reads you, it doesn’t really matter because you’re doing what you want to do regardless and to a writer or a blogger for that matter isn’t it about what flows naturally that makes what you write good?

You can normally tell which ones don’t have this: they were started a year ago and have 5 posts, one of which is the obligatory “welcome to my new blog”. In many ways, knowing why the blog exists can mean that your list can be trimmed down by a point or two.

I do believe, however, that the blog has prevented the Tripod, Angelfire, etc etc sites from proliferating and growing more than they did at their heights. Blogs can be easy to set up and maintain, much like those early sites. Many of them have as much point to them as those websites, too