Doyce inquires (via an inquiry by Juli — glad she’s back to trying to post regularly, I’ll have to put her in the link list) why people blog. Or, more particularly, why some people blog so much (cough), and others either shy away from the whole idea, or else start one, and then it quickly withers with that first (or maybe even second) post.
I can’t speak for why folks don’t blog. But here’s why I do it.
Actually, I think I tried answering this shortly after I started doing bloggy stuff. Let’s see what I think now.
Yes, I am that desperate for validation.
“Narcissus, is there someone else?”
Heck, this is a problem I have with people I see weekly. For those I see every several months … when asked what I’ve been up to, I tend to just drool a lot.
So there are three reasons. Which is the biggest? Which way is the wind blowing today? They all play a role pretty much every time I post here, albeit in different proportions.
Doyce nearly reached 2,000 hits this month. Cool.
I just started tracking stats (see the little “stats” box in the margin?) in the middle of this month. Since 14 September, I’ve had 363 hits.
Now, some of those were me actually posting (that’s a hit from Blogger.com), or me loading up my blog. That happens both at home and at work, so that might be 4 hits per day, based on the way Stats4You works.
There are some indices I’ve registered with that occasionally ping me. That’s a few hits there.
Still, that’s pretty cool.
Last week I went ahead and registered my web site and/or my blog there with various search engines. Yes, that’s another one of those ego things.
The only one that seems to have actually crawled through here is Google, which has resulted in some hits already (including one from Wirtualna Polska, which seems to be a multi-search site in Poland. Again, cool.). The most popular hits seem to be WTC-related stuff (duh) and, surprisingly, the Justice League cartoon.
So that’s enough about why. That leaves how. How is it that, with a day job, and a wife and daughter at home, I crank out so much here.
Well, like I said, I like to talk. This is me talking. Again, do the math.
The most common bit of advice that writers give to aspiring writers on the subject of “How do I learn how to write” is … write. Write something every day. Because the more it becomes a habit, the more you’ll do it. More importantly, your mind will begin to think in terms of writing.
I now find myself noticing things and thinking, “Hey, that would make a cool blog post.” Stuff that I might have forwarded on to one friend or another, now I blogpost. Things I hear on the radio, read on the news, or just encounter — I think in terms of communicating them, and so I do. I make the connection, then I make the time.
I don’t think it has anything to do with my leading a particularly interesting life.
It’s like the jingle: Just Do It.