Why blog?
Seth Godin recently wrote about why people blog:
“What do most people get out of blogging? After all, most blogs are virtually unread by outsiders…
The act of writing a blog changes people, especially business people. The first thing it does is change posture. Once you realize that no HAS to read your blog, that you can’t MAKE them read your blog, you approach writing with humility and view readers with gratitude. The second thing it does is force you to be clear. If you write something that’s confusing or in shorthand, you fail.
Respectful and clear. That’s a lot to get out of something that doesn’t take much time.”
Since my blog definitely falls into the “virtually unread by outsiders” category, why do I bother? For me, its more of a replacement of a journal. Of course its public and I suppose that limits what I can write about, but I’m a pretty open person so I don’t find that to be a huge limitation. For me its about having a written record of my thoughts and musings, as well as the books I’ve been reading, the music I’ve been listening to, and some of the other things that are a big part of my life. Being a child of the internet, I like that writing a blog (instead of a journal) makes this written record searchable, linkable, and easily shared. Also, it allows me to include digital things that are hard to get into a hardcopy journal – and although the converse is also true – there are things that exist in the physical world that are hard to get into a blog, I find that the balance sways in the direction of the digital. But I do keep a paper sketchbook/journal/notepad/collection of interesting things to fill in the gaps. In fact, if I had a scanner, I’d probably scan some of those pages and post them here, because I think they’re interesting in a raw, unpolished sort of way. I did this in my digital portfolio and I like the depth that adds to an otherwise all-digital website.
