First Blog

Well, I have stood in wonder of my friends who write blogs for a while. What's the point of writing a blog? (for those who are confused: blog = short for "web log". It took me longer than I'd care to admit to realize that.) Is it just to record your thoughts and the events of your daily life, like a journal or diary? If so, why post it on the internet? Does the blogger post his or her thoughts so that they feel like other people are reading about them, and therefore acknowledging them? Is it sad for them to want/need that kind of acknowledgment? Or maybe it's just to maintain some low-cadence communication with friends and family, independent of their location. Is it to rant or rave about things they hate or love, and let the blogger feel like they said what was on their mind in a forum where others could hear them, but only if those others wanted to? These are the type of unanswered questions that kept me from having a web presence before. I think each blogger has their own reasons for putting their thoughts online, which may or may not fall into the narrow situations I asked about. Finally, I came up with a reason or two to have my own.

I've found myself using my free (or, at least, bored) time to read my friends updates and posts to their online journals, and realized I enjoyed hearing about their daily lives. I guess it's encouraging to hear about people thinking things I might also think, or having experiences that are like my own. It reminds me that people are deep, funny, clever, clumsy, emotional, apologetic, passionate beings, not just drones who go to work, then go home then go to work then come home ad nauseum. I've heard many people say "I've got nothing interesting to say, so I shouldn't write a blog", and yet when I read some of my friends' blogs, I'm interested in hearing about the little things that they themselves might think are uninteresting.


As I have reached my mid-twenties, I've begun to think about how I sort of wish I had kept a diary or journal growing up. I'd convinced myself that I don't have the time for or the interest in such things, which is not really true. I'd like to be able to look back on a day, years from now, and see what I was thinking about, how I was feeling, and what my hopes, dreams, and problems were at the time. I look back at anything written or said by my parents or grandparents when they were young, and I am fascinated. It's interesting to listen to or read someone's thoughts, and then see how life has changed them, or not, over time since then. Maybe it's a silly desire to want to preserve some of your youth (or lack thereof) in a journal, but I've been known to do sillier things.

So there you go: a rambling explanation of why I might want to start a blog. I intend to use this blog to post my thoughts, be they deep or mundane, silly or serious. It will serve as my journal, and my bulletin board. As so many have said for so many reasons: we'll see how it goes.