Blogger's regret and a mistake

I actually started this post a few days ago, blogging about a lesson I taught my students on "regret," but it turned out I regretted my post so I took it down, which got me thinking about my own regret about blogging. According to  Dani Shapiro's essay in the LA Times on Sunday (2/7), "writers tweet and blog and make Facebook friends in the time they used to spend writing," which if you ask me is a little behind the times (although I agree about the time suck of fb). If you're a person prone to regret like myself though, these accusations weigh heavily at night: is blogging "real" writing or just throwing sand against the windy blogosphere?

Okay enough of that. For this post on regret I was looking around for a dog to illustrate and then saw this one on Facebook, taken by my son. It immediately became my model.

Mikidos (photo by Mekko)

Mekko says of the pooch: "Here's the dog pic I shot when we were stuck in the rain for three days at the beach house in the north of the DR. They named him Mickidos because he's the second Miki after the first one died. A very calm and composed dog. The cat kept beating him up."

This following story of regret, which required Miki's mug, is from Hee Yoon, a young Korean student who dropped in on my class when I first began teaching. The assignment that night was to write about one thing you regretted in your life. In her own words:

Mistake

"When I was 10-years-old, my mother brought a cutey dog which was two-years-old. My mother and I took care of her everyday. I thought my mother loved her more than me. I was really, really jealous so I decided to bother my Pobbie. One day when my mother was gone shopping I cut her hair everywhere and I put her into the refrigerator for 10 minutes."

"After that I got her out. When my mother came back I hugged mother, smiling, but I regetted my behavior in the morning. Because Pobbie died. Maybe she was shocked. That was my big mistake. Mother still doesn't know what I did...

"Later mother buried her on the really good mountain where mother cried."

Postscript: I'd be curious to know your thoughts on real writing v. blogging? (for the sake of argument, real being anything published outside the blogosphere.)