blogging about blogging

Some day I'm going to write about all the ways that I am a walking dichotomy. I contradict myself at every turn. I am incongruity personified.

I was the valedictorian of my high school class.....but I didn't have a 4.0 grade point average.
I am on staff with a world wide evangelical mission organization... but I'm a failure at personal Bible study.

I've been blogging for three years....and I don't know the first thing about it. And frankly, I'm a bit intimidated by it all; there are so many seemingly commonplace aspects that are a total mystery to me. Where was I when all these upstarts got so savvy?

I think I need a class. I need someone who's really on top of it all to walk me through it starting at the basics. Questions?? Lordy have I got questions.

What's sk*rt? What's technorati? What's digg this? What's a ping back? What's an RSS? What does stumble mean? What does it mean to save to Del.icio.us? What's a permalink? What's Mr. Linky? What about ads? What's the deal with all these blogging communities?

And then there are the things I'm pretty sure I should instinctively know. Should I allow search engines? Should I allow anyone to comment? Should I moderate comments? Should I NOT be posting pictures of my kids?

I have tried, since the beginning, to deliberately protect my privacy, just by never using my last name or specific place names (such as schools, towns, etc.). I have obviously not posted ahead of time when I was going to be home alone, or where we keep the spare key. Now I wonder if I should be using pseudonyms, or, like some bloggers do, just descriptive labels for my kids. "SonOne said the funniest thing to me the other day..." "LittleDaughter is suffering from an ingrown toenail..."

I'm thinking now I should have come up with a celebrity nickname, like the movie stars do when they check into a hotel. Do you think it's too late? I think you could start referring to me as Julia Roberts from now on... (just don't use my real last name!)

But I really would like to know how all the rest of you (ha! "all" -- I'm clearly delusional) have handled your bloggy basics. How do you protect your privacy? What steps have you taken and why? How do you let friends, relatives, and fans know that you'll be going incognito from now on? How do you know how anonymous you should be? What are the actual risks?

Who out there understands all the blogocious terminology and would be willing to share their wisdom? Or who can at least point me in the right direction? I have found a couple of sites that I have to believe are genuinely trying to be helpful, but God love 'em -- it's like trying to read the instructions for filing your tax return. Unless you already understand it, the directions don't make sense, because they're written in blog-ese. I need an interpreter.

And lastly, if you're actually reading this, would you please just let me know? I recently came upon a blog called Questions in the Void, and it makes me wonder if I am, like Kathleen Kelly said in "You've Got Mail," just sending these cosmic questions out into the void.