You're a Dedicated Blogger If ...

1. While driving in your car, you keep one eye on the road while the other eye watches out for posting-fodder along the way.

2. Your vacation checklist includes the following item: “Post a ‘going on vacation’ blog before leaving.” If you’re really hopeless, it might also include “check blog to see if anyone wished me well” further down the list.

3. You’re suddenly glad you had that root canal (insert: blazing sunburn, fender bender, broken leg or heart attack) in ’96 because you were running low on post ideas.

4. You find yourself saying things like “Aw, look at the cute little tree blog …I mean FROG” or “Last night I slept like a blog … I mean LOG.”

5. Your purse or backpack is filled with the following items: pens, notebook, mini voice recorder and digital camera; if you’re lucky enough, a laptop is tucked beneath your arm. You're hopeless if you're only going to the grocery store!

6. a) When someone comes to your home, you proudly break out the mixed photo albums, but when it comes to uploading an image of yourself on your blog, you painstakingly rummage through 250 pictures in order to choose only the best of the best for your post.

6.b) You hesitate and change your mind five times before uploading a photo of yourself. You’re hopeless if you photoshop it first, covering the grey or cropping 10 unwanted pounds.

7. You resent the fact that the media labels you as being self-absorbed because you blog. What pisses you off the most is that you know it’s at least partly true, but it doesn’t really matter.

8. Your real life friends beg you not to use some embarrassing moment of theirs as a post topic.

9. You’ve just created a masterpiece on a hot news topic, but before you publish it, you read three other masterpieces on the same topic ~ all outshining your own by a long shot. You begrudgingly delete your work of art.

10. You go to add a brilliant comment on somebody's post only to find that someone already said exactly the same thing. You end up typing “Great post” and leaving it at that out of frustration.

11. First thing in the morning, you turn on the computer and open your blog site before making your coffee. If you’re really hopeless, you do so before you use the small room (toilet).

12. You’re thrilled to see six comments on your freshly posted blog, only to discover Blogger went whacko during the night and posted triple comments. If you’re really hopeless, you swear out loud over this.

13. You look over and see your dog holding his crotch because you haven’t let him out for five hours while you were totally absorbed in blog-hopping.

14. The family comes to know the back of your head better than your face as you sit at the computer night after night trying to get your blog template “just right.”

15. You sit at your desk and computer for hours on end at home, writing a post about how horrible it is to be tethered to your desk and computer at work all day. (NOTE: at work you got paid for it, while blogging, you did not; at work, you stopped for lunch, while blogging, you did not)

16. Sometimes while on vacation, you used to get a little homesick; now you get blog-sick (as in blogdrawal).

17. Your dreams used to include winning the lottery, clocking your obnoxious next door neighbor, and living in a castle with a Lexus parked outside. Now they include winning the lottery and attracting better than 20 readers per post.

18. You sense a great loss when a fellow-blogger hasn’t posted in two weeks time ~ or worse, when they quit blogging altogether. You can’t stand not knowing what’s wrong, and you’ve never even met them or seen their face.

19. You beat yourself up all evening because while driving home from work you came up with a brilliant post topic and half-wrote it, mentally ~ you get into the house and can’t recall it for all the tea in England.

20. You hesitate for ten full seconds before clicking “publish post” because it’s a topic that might offend someone ~ who, more than likely, won’t be reading your post anyway.

21. You post a bitch-fest about your job, only to discover that someone at work has been reading your stuff. They threaten to have you fired, so you rush home and immediately go to Monster.com (job search site) rather than deleting your post. You’re really hopeless if it's no contest.

22. You lie awake at night trying to decide in which order you will attack your blogroll the next morning, making sure not to skip anyone and hoping they’ll understand if it takes you several days to catch up. You’re really hopeless if you’ve got your blogroll memorized ~ in alphabetical order!

23. It’s a struggle to decide if you will share your Blogger URL with the extended family … you must first spend three full days reviewing your older posts to be sure none of them include insults about Uncle Vinny or Cousin Pete.

24. In a desperate attempt to keep up with other bloggers, you start posting “reruns” you published several months ago.

25. You start to notice a “spread” on your bottom from sitting in your favorite blog chair (read computer chair) but it’s all good because you’ve skipped many meals for the sake of posting, reading and commenting. You’re really hopeless if you figure somehow it will even itself out.