Why Blog
After reading Kelly Brewer’s post on why she blogs, I found myself thinking about the reasons I blog. For Kelly, who’s both busy and shy, it’s a way of keeping in touch with a full and wide-ranging group of friends, family, and contacts (and I have some very entertaining out-of-town friends for whom I consider it a civic duty to start a blog; but will they??). My blog started out that way, with the wildfires last summer. So many people wanted to know how we were doing, it was easiest to share the information this way. Over time, though, as I considered whether I wanted to keep up a blog or not, I realized that, for a writer, it represents a particularly rich medium in terms of its flexibility and spontaneity.
For one thing, I can write about anything I feel like, any time. And I can publish it whenever I feel like it—immediately, or years from now. I have several areas of interest that I’ve kept up over the years, and it’s fun to distill my knowledge in blog entries so that the information stays well-organized, updated and accessible.
Also, I love storytelling. I love to hear and read stories, and I love to tell them. I may never get a book published by a mainstream publisher, but I can share my work with whomever might enjoy it by publishing it on my blog. Writing is a way for me to make sense out of and put into context my everyday experiences, too. Speaking isn’t always easy for me but writing is a pleasure. I think it is so cute that humans read and write. I love that about them :)
The other thing is, I have a strong service streak (unlike, apparently, my selfish non-blogging friends!), which might seem straightforward enough, but the fact is, I’m also shy, highly sensitive (not boasting—it’s just a temperament marked by certain characteristics), bizarrely brought up (religiously, anyway) and introverted. I’m able to interact with x number of people x number of hours or minutes a day and “x” is never very large, even on a good day. So how can I serve? How can I fulfill what I feel is one of my prime directives, which is my desire to make people feel better? I like doing this a lot. It makes me feel good to boost the spirits of someone downhearted and it tickles me to enhance the mood of someone already riding high. I like to make people laugh … I like to give them practical information that might help them. I like to support other people’s work. And I like to make people feel better about themselves, their world, or their fellow humans, if at all possible. Others may write to raise awareness or highlight injustice or to more simply entertain or inform. But I write in hopes of making people feel better. Granted, given all characteristics I mentioned above, I sometimes fall short of my objective. But the intention is always there.
About the lack of a comments section: I can do that if I change my hosting set-up and pay an extra monthly charge for my site. It’s not a huge, huge, deal, although it’s true that at this point, just maintaining the blog—writing and sometimes researching the posts, taking the photos, Photoshopping them if need be, getting the content into the web software, checking links and uploading it—represents a sturdy commitment. But I’ve been dragging my feet and I think maybe it’s because I just don’t want a comments section per se. It’s not that I don’t want to hear from people and that I don’t want to post their content, too. I actually really do!
But a Comments Section … For me, it brings up too many uncomfortable feelings I most recently experienced in high school. Like, does how many comments I get represent how popular I am? If I get no comments would that bother me? As much as I’d like to think that I’ve grown past such concerns, isn’t it possible that there would be that niggling “no one likes me, waaaahh!” voice in the back of my head? And say I got some glowing or even just mildly positive comments—wouldn’t my ego take that as carte blanche to start caring far, far too much what people think so it can get all puffed up and enslave me with its tyrannical pettiness? I think there’s a distinct possibility of that. In my experience, even if you get it, popularity carries the dangerous allure of a Trojan Horse. It makes you feel good at first, you’re all “Hey, look what I have!” and then it kills you.
I’m having too much fun to have these possible side-effects distract me. And I like not having advertisements on my blog that I’d get with another server. There’s that oppositional defiant disorder kicking in. I forgot to mention that earlier.
So, with all this in mind, and with apologies to Crazy Good Fortune Out of the Blue fans, I’m going back to writing a blog once a week and posting an installment of my memoir once a week. I miss blogging. I miss sharing something new, something that’s on my mind at the moment. It’s a very cool art form, one that I’m enjoying a lot!
And I very much appreciate the visits of those who stop by; I hope some of my posts brighten your day, entertain you, give you some information you can use, or make you feel better in some ineffable way. Drop me a line any time, if you want; I’d love to hear from you.
Next Crazy Good Fortune installment will be posted later this week.
Above: Some ostrich eggs that I decorated with vintage hardware. I’m thinking about doing a series if I can get more eggs and hardware.
Monday, April 13, 2009