I’ve got a new job on top of the other dozen.

This one is part-time, pays only an occasional Sushi lunch, and is important to me.

I’ve agreed to help Dr. Nancy Burns as an official mentor for her new upcoming (not yet published) blog, “Nancy Burns: Crossroads.”

Nancy is a much loved and exceptionally humane and caring chiropractor. She lives in Bennington, Vt. She gave up a long-term relationship to become a mother. She is a healer.

Nancy runs a thriving healing center. She is looking to hire an online matchmaker to help find a partner; she wants to share her life with her son and with another woman. Her practice is in Bennington, Vt.

Mostly, she wants to share the health and medical wisdom she’s picked up and works so hard to practice. She had some exciting things to tell me today about the coronavirus epidemic.

She is what I call an ethical healer; she cares more about helping people than any other thing.

For me, a passionate advocate for blogs, she is a natural student. She is serious about starting a blog and is now hiring a techie to set it up.

She is an articulate advocate for more humane and effective treatment of people’s bodies, and the pain they often needlessly endure. Her patients very much love her.

I can testify to her skill and compassion. She is also a passionate advocate for LTGBQ rights. And she wants to write about all the different parts of her life on a new blog. She is a friend.

My interest is this: I believe in the power of blogs to support individuals, writers, and free and original thinkers in a corporatized media world. Nancy knows her stuff and is at a critical and interesting crossroads in her life.

I’ve been pushing people for years to start their blogs – writers, artists, housewives, farmers. It has been a lot tougher road than I imagined.

One friend, an artist, abandoned our growing friendship because I urged him to sell his paintings on a blog.

He was offended.

I was invited to speak to a group of writers in Saratoga and was nearly thrown out of the building for urging them – they were all struggling to get published – to bypass the awful corporate system of publishing and start their blogs, as I did.

One said he would rather become a prostitute than a blogger, at least he’d get paid better.

Of all the dozens, even hundreds, of people I’ve pushed to start a blog, about a half dozen have done it.  The idea frightens people. They worry about upsetting families or spouses; they feel they have nothing to say; they fear trolls and nasties.

But I have had some luck.

My most recent success was with a fascinating woman named Carolyn Smith, who moved from Seattle to upstate New York with 13 rescue cats a couple of years ago.

A self-described hermit, and a gifted writer, Carolyn feels safe when she is alone with her 13 cats. I’ve gotten to know her and like her, but rarely see her.

Carolyn was a writing student of mine, and I was mesmerized by her life with cats and her writing about growing up in Cambodia and traveling the world (her father was a British diplomat.)

At first, I thought Carolyn was strange – I mean, living with 13 cats and a bad back?- but the truth is, she’s just fascinating. She started her blog, Cats in Cambridge, and it has connected her happily with the passionate world of extreme cat lovers.

The blog has a lot of writing about cats, of course,  but is much more than that; it’s an eclectic mix of cats, memories, exotic antiques and photos, and ruminations about nature and beauty. Carolyn is a born blogger. I love great stories that would otherwise never be told.

Blogs now offer us a world unto themselves. They advance the idea that all of us have stories to tell, and our stories are important. Carolyn is a beautiful example of the power of the blog to give space to individual expression.

And in between her many feline adventures and challenges, there are those sparkling pieces about growing up in Southeast Asia. Where else could you get a mix like that?

Carolyn didn’t need much persuasion. She jumped at the idea. Rather than being branded as one of those eccentric cat people, she is instead celebrating her life with cats.

Another excellent and successful blog is published daily by the brilliant writer and artist Rachel Barlow, a blogger, essayist, teacher, painter, and sketcher. Whatever Rachel does is done creatively and wonderfully.

She is one of the most successful painters in Vermont.

Rachel has battled through bi-polar disorder ad lots of bumps in life. She is wonderfully gifted, her blog is one of the best and most creative ever.

To me, this is the power of the blog (Maria has found this to be true). It gives individual people with little voice in our culture a loud and clear voice, a way of finding their tribe, doing their work, sharing their lives.

My blog has saved my writing life and opened up my writing in ways books could not, and publishers would not.

People are always telling me I should send my posts to the New York Times; this still puzzles me. My blog has a lot more readers than the New York Times does, and I am free to write what I want to write, not what others feel I should write.

Without my blog, I’d be taking orders at Dunkin’ Donuts. I love to inspire and support people who want to start blogs. None of them has regretted it for a moment.

Carolyn could never get on the evening news, but her story is compelling, and her blog has connected her with her community – obsessive but loving cat people. Her childhood is straight out of Dickens, nasty British boarding school included.

Her writing about Cambodia should be published in the New York Times, but won’t be. How wonderful it is being published at all.

Nancy Burns is quite different than Carolyn; an accomplished health cares professional with a lot of ideas and a love of writing. I am delighted to help her get started.

She doesn’t need to be prodded and cajoled to write; she does it all the time.

And she is at a crossroads in her life, willing to share the story of her search for someone to share it with her after devoting years to the raising of her son.

She also fights all the time with the modern health care struggle between practitioners who want to help people heal and those who just want to make money—yet another good storyline for a blog.

I am eager to follow her online matchmaker story and her search for companionship, and she is willing to share it.

I think she has a great story to tell, and I can’t think of a better or more productive use of my time to continue to share what I have learned about blogging and finding one’s voice online.

We had a great lunch today in Bennington at a Japanese restaurant there.

Nancy did make me pay for my half of the lunch. I’ll have to negotiate about that down the road. I took her photo; she knows she’s in for it now.

I can’t imagine my life without this blog, and I can hardly begin to recount how much it has done for me.

There are an awful lot of good people out there who are sick of corporate media and its hysteria and divisiveness and are eager to read about the lives of other people, so long as the stories are authentic and considered.

So Nancy’s blog is officially underway. I can’t wait to see it.

She is a natural blogger with lots to say. And she wants to use her blog to help people navigate the morass that health care can be.

I am committed to helping her in any way I can. I expect she will be up and writing on the blog within a couple of weeks.

Stay tuned; I will keep you posted.