November 22, 2004
Frank Paynter is asking bloggers why they blog. From some of the early responses, I have to admit that their reasons are a lot more engaging than mine. Their answers to that question are a lot more clever, creative, and funny than mine (which I will include at the end of this post).
The main difference between a simple website and a weblog is that (most) weblogs invite comments. Therefore, most weblogs are invitations to conversations. And so lots of webloggers are as interested in generating comments as they are in posting interesting stuff. I started out that way, and I still appreciate getting a good comment conversation going. But that's not why I blog.
Here's why I blog:
I’m a writer. Not a great writer, but a pretty good writer. For me, writing has always been an addiction. Writing is part of who I am. I write to make sense of the world around me – to strengthen my sense of place in it. I blog to maintain that part of me that’s a writer. I blog to keep my brain working. Use it or lose it.
I use the most simple blogging technology possible. I don’t know aggregators from aggravators, and I tend to avoid both.
When I began blogging, I felt compelled to reach out to an audience and insert myself into various blogging communities. I began developing a blogroll that’s now terribly out of date. I used to leave lots of comments on others’ weblogs as a way to generate community energy. But I no longer have the energy to do even that. Now, I write assuming that I’m read pretty much by family and friends. The truth is, however, because of the kinds of things I write about, I get a steady stream of strangers -- and their friends -- stopping by because someone picked me up on Google. The sense of community I originally sought is not the one I’ve wound up with, and that’s fine. For example, people like Ramona Moorman, who is close to my age and the editor of a small newspaper in the Midwest, found me through Google and has become a regular reader. We also email each other.
I learned early on in my life that I couldn’t be all things to all people. In terms of my identity as a blogger, it was much easier to keep to that philosophy early on, when there weren’t that many of us who were trying to use blogging as a way to establish connections with like hearts and minds. But times have changed. The blogging population has exploded. I can’t be all things to all bloggers. So, I’ve taken the position that those who are attracted to who I am as a writer and what I write about will gravitate toward my weblog. And it works the same way from my end.
I blog to connect with the world outside myself that I’m trying to make sense of.
I blog to keep up my spirit; to stir the spirit of others; to stir my blood, my brain, and my beliefs. I blog because I’m not a Molly Ivins or a Mary Oliver.
I blog because I’m a writer and blogging gives me a place to put it all.
So, while weblog conversations continue about the value, the accuracy, the truthfulness, and the confusions of blogging, I say "Feh!" It's like having a conversation about the value, the accuracy, the truthfulness, and the confusions of poetry. Poets write because it's what they do, because it's what they love to do, because it's what they have to do. Bloggers blog for the same reasons. Of course, blogs have a much wider audience and much broader innfluence than poetry. Well, the public out there reading blogs are just going to have to educate themselves to understand how the medium affects the message. Just as with poetry.
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