The One About Blogging

A friend and reader today gently nudged me and noted the lack of nutritional content on these pages as of late. "Need more snacks at MAS," or something like that. The comment was made, "so much to blog about that you can't," and while I think the intention was to say, "you have so many topics to choose from that you don't know where to start," I first read it as "the topics mulling about in your brain aren't blog-appropriate."

Which got me to thinking about the whole blog thing, anyway. I guess it was inevitable that one day I would write the "why blog" entry (I've been pondering it for maybe 3 months), so here goes.

I've kept some form of journal off and on for years. (Not a diary, mind you, a journal.) The earliest one I can find right now is from 1990, and I had a pretty good record of dropping in commentary on a semi-regular basis. Writing became my catharsis. I could put words around what I was feeling through some troubling times in my life, and sometimes even sort things out, just by writing. It's fascinating for me to go back and read my own writing, and recall where I was at the time.

I slacked off after college, which I rather regret—there is a chunk of my life (late 1994-2001), for which I have to rely on an increasingly shady memory to recount the tales. (In fact, I quit journalling just before I decided to move to Florida, so the decision process itself is lost.)

Then, last fall, I was introduced to Blogger by some friends, and even made new friends (initially) because of the blogging gig. So I now had an all-new outlet to record the minutia of my life. Except I know that this is read by people who know me, know who I am, can pick me out of a lineup—so it's not the place for the deepdark stuff that one just doesn't share with people casually.

To be honest, I even toyed temporarily with an alternative blog that wasn't tied back to this site—or me—in any way I could identify. The novelty of a truly honest and open blog quickly wore off, though, under the pressure of posting regularly to another site, and the known (and at first, desired) lack of readership. I realized I could just as easily accomplish it by keeping a running journal in Word, as I used to, without broadcasting it to the 'net. It's gone, so don't go lookin'.

It's funny to go back and see where my blogging has gone this year. It started out as a link-race, where we all tried to find odd web links that supported an idea, or even just a word, we had posted. Along the way, some of my frequent-read blogs have gone away; some of my friends and acquaintances have found the effort to have lost its charm over time. And yet, this recent dry spell notwithstanding, I continue (along, I might add, with friends Bj and Dewayne).

Did I answer my own question, "why blog?" Maybe, maybe not. The whole thing works for me, even if just to catalog where I "am" in all senses of the word. I hope I can sit back and read all this in 2011 and appreciate it, as I do now the entries from the early 90's; in the meantime, I hope you, my audience, enjoy being along for the ride.