Is There a Difference Between Blogging and Being a Blogger?

I've had this blog for several years at this point. I used it to cover the radio show I and a college roommate had together my Sophomore year. It followed me to China, as I shared my perspective on being abroad in a country where access to my blog required circumventing the great firewall of China. I used it to follow my attempts at budgeting eating in and eating out over the summer after Junior year, when I lived and worked in DC. After all of these years, I would tell people who inquired, "I blog," yet I never considered myself to be a blogger.

I was recently invited to be a part of the "Local Voices" section of the Georgetown, DC Patch, part of a network of blogs that follow local news and events. I find it a bit ironic that I am part of the "Local Voices" at a time when I am searching for my voice beyond Georgetown. As an unemployed, recent graduate, the transition is and will be bumpy. However, this opportunity is a way to reach out to other young adults in transition and show them that it is navigable and a part of growing up.

Was this invitation the call to blogger-hood? What about this makes my blogging more official? Is it the fact that I have a larger platform and a larger audience? Was it because now there was an authority who can dictate whether or not my posts deserved to be posted, whether or not my voiced deserved to be heard? I like to think that there is no difference between blogging and being a blogger, just how there is no difference between running and being a runner. I guess it is a matter of doing versus defining oneself by the action. Regardless, I'm beginning to feel like a blogger. And I believe that it will only be more real once my first post goes live.

See Georgetown.patch.com for my posts as a contributing blogger! Add the RSS feed to your Google Reader, make it your homepage, do whatever you need to do...