Why Blog?

Lisa over at Coming To Terms has raised some thoughtful questions about blogging -- why we do it, what the rewards are, why we stop.   She notes that a number of excellent writers have vanished from the AOL scene and wonders what drives us to start and then to drop out -- topics, comments, reader numbers, what?

I suppose that many of us ruminate about these issues.  After all, journaling does steal time from many other endeavors.  And reading journals -- journals and journals and journals, oh my! 

I started my journal thinking diet and fitness -- I thought I would make myself more accountable by appearing in print.  Well, that sure worked.  But what I did find, as my friend Kathryn has noted, is that the very act of keeping a public journal has changed the way that I look at things.  I am much more attentive to the bits and pieces of my life now, often thinking of how some minor occurrence or idea will translate into a journal entry.

That ""public" is the rub. This journal has been a regular activity in my life for nearly 14 months now -- that's about 13 months and 3 weeks longer than I've managed to keep up with any of my handwritten journals.  There's no doubt that the comments are a huge motivating factor.  I wasn't anticipating the community aspect of AOL journals at all, but I have found a small group of folks with whom I seem to share a certain crooked perspective on enough topics to keep us all reading and supporting one another -- some regularly, some erratically.  I'm one of those all-over-the-place journalers, so I've had to realize that I'll never gain much of a dedicated following.  Lisa is right -- the psychology of the genre seems to lend itself toward categorization, and my rambles through reading, family life, teaching, nature, religion, travel, photography, politics, and the neighborhood don't seem easily categorizable.  I'm also pretty circumspect in print, and that's just me -- I'm not going to say anything much at all about my job or rant about my family in such a public space.  No Queen of Sky problems for me, thank you very much -- and I want to feel confident that anything my family members find online won't lead to civil war.

I'm the same kind of reader -- all over the place.  Sometimes I just sit and follow journal link to journal link.  I used to save the ones I liked, but I'm almost given up on that -- otherwise I would be reading journals 24/7.  My Favorite Places category for journals is about to explode as it is.  But my proclivity for reading just about anyone on just about anything probably makes me a poor journal fan.  An ADD reader isn't your best bet for building a solid and consistent reader base.

I have been wondering if my journaling is running its course, but for a couple of good reasons.  For one, I've explored most of my limited range of opinions in the past year, and there's no reason to bore other people into the sound sleep that eludes me every night.  (Hey! Let them all wander around the house at 4:00 a.m, too!)  And, for a second, I'm becoming increasingly interested in working on my writing in a maybe-fine-tune-this-maybe-publish-something kind of way, and that takes TIME.  So I may start to reschedule msyelf a bit.

On the other hand (there's always another hand), as I flip through the past 14 months, my journal tells me that I've seen a third child through high school and the college application process, sent older kids off on European travels, gotten two courses close to another degree, revived my interest in photography, acquired some new leadership responsibilities, survived a traumatic election, worked on my writing, and shared the end of life with a beloved family member.  There's something to be said for hanging on to some version of it all.