I read blogs. I should know better. I know what my blog is like, but somehow I still get drawn into the world of other people through their writings. And you really do get to know someone quite well when you read their blog pretty much daily. That's how it works. I've recently met someone whom I'd only previously known through his blog and he met my expectations head on.

The problem is this. The more you read a blog, the more emotionally invested you can become. Even if you and the other person haven't met in real life, their daily grind gains an importance. At least this is my experience.

Yesterday I read a blog entry of someone I know in real life, albeit not very well. It filled me with a great deal of sadness that someone whom I know in passing had so much hurt and injustice to write about. Life can be very cruel, and though I appreciate that it's both very brave and cathartic to write about these hurts, reading that blog filled me with a deep sense of powerlessness. What can I do? I sent a note, but that was about the most I could practically do and even then it was hard to find the words.

There are a pair of blogs I've read on and off, the second one a result of the first. The bloggers were a couple. Today I read that they're no longer a couple. Again, I've been party to someone else's heartbreak. In this case I really have no connection with either party, so I feel a bit of a voyeur... it's not good. It's not good to vicariously experience a complete stranger's pain in such a personal way.

Having said that, maybe it's not meant to be good. Maybe it is something which somehow enriches the human experience these days. Everyone is online and you can share your thoughts with the world. And maybe someone is listening. And maybe they're not.

This blog is clearly an offender on the whole "being a bit miserable and gloomy" front, with the occasional flashes of hilarity or heartbreak. Sorry if it's given you a bit of a downer. I'm supposed to be using this to exercise my brain to commentate on life as I see it. As a pretender to the role of comedian, I need to do this. It's how comedians operate. Yet sometimes, this is just my brain dump - a place to whinge.

I hope my whinges can be seen as laughable if not, at least, funny. Compared to other things I've read recently, my problems are trivial.