AND SO WHAT IS THE ROB LOG ABOUT ANYWAY?
Okay, you already know the answer to that question. Sort of. These web logs can be almost anything. Each has its own personality, and blah blah blah blah blah.

But as a new-ish blogger -- a Robby-come-lately -- I've been thinking about the question and, more to the point, discussing it via e-mail (for the record, they asked me) with some other relative newbies. And I still don't have an answer.

Maybe because I just feel it is what it is. I had no preconceived intentions when I started this three months ago, except to have another play space. I'm not here to hone my writing skills or find an audience. I'm not here to be especially thoughtful or profound, or to tell you how I think you should think (despite the TRL tagline.) And I'm not here to make new friends from the web log community (which in any event includes just about everyone, doesn't it?)

If I happen to slip and write something thought-provoking, or if you become a fan of Famous Author Rob Byrnes because you stumbled across TRL, well, fantastic. And if we meet some day and become fast friends, that's just great. But really, I'm just here because I'm here.

And while I'm on the subject of The Rob Log, this is probably a good time to answer a few questions about my links. Lance Arthur has a very funny mock-interview on his site -- "Weblogterview" -- in which he writes:

"You link to people hoping they'll link to you
and then when they don't you take their link
off because they really weren't worth linking
to in the first place."

I'm sure there's a lot of that out there. (And since Lance always cracks me up, I'm adding a link to him in this update. Is that poetic, or what?) That's not what I'm up to here, though, because I'm not out hunting down an audience and, frankly, don't know what I'd give it if I found one. When your boyfriend, several exes, parents, siblings, roommate, co-workers, 300-member mailing list, and a few members of the Board of Directors of your day job visit your web log, it puts limits on a lot of political opining and random bitching about your boyfriends, exes, parents, siblings, roommates, co-workers, mailing list, and day job.

Before I started TRL, I read blogs -- a lot of blogs -- for almost a year, and I found some favorites. Those are the recommended reads on the sidebar. Yes, they include a lot of the 'Popular Kids,' but there is a reason those kids are popular. I didn't link to them because I'm in high school and hope to become popular by proximity to the popular. I link to them because they're worth reading. I'm quite confident that most of my links have no idea this site exists, and that's just fine with me. You should read them because they're good, not because I want them to be my friends and come over for sleepovers and pass notes in math class.

By the way, I should add that there are a few sites I read regularly that I don't link to. Let's call them the 'car crash' sites. I keep going back 'cause I can't avert my eyes...

And, yes, my links are a mixed lot. Some are there because I find them thought-provoking, some are there because I think they're very funny, some are there because I've become caught up in following their lives, and some are there because they offer links to hours of information and/or amusement. Even politically, they're a mixed lot: everything from center-right to anarchist. As a retired politician, I often find the opinions expressed hopelessly naive, lacking in perspective, or evident of a life unlived in the 1960s and early 70s, but that's all right. A link at The Rob Log does not connote 100% agreement on any individual item.

So there you have it.

Now, that having been said, I should note that I give good reciprocal link. Latest victim: BoiFromTroy, self-described "Gay. Republican. Sports Fan In West Hollywood, California." Enjoy! (Or should that be 'Enjoi'?)