What is this Anyway?

I use Google to see if anyone reads this - not sure why I care, but it's kind of cool to see where people are reading it from and what pages get read the most. Then I had a revelation, why do I care? I re-interest in blogging came from a writing course in the school of ed - a discussion of teachers as writers and writers needing to write. This happens to be more natural for me than writing in a notebook thus it becomes my 'writers notebook.' But if it comes up in conversation, the likely response is "weird, I would never write like that so other people could see it." or "Why do you want people reading that crap?" and most common, "not like anyone cares." All of which may be completely true. Yet thousands of people blog across the world...why?

I comfort myself with the idea that it's just a desire to see our thoughts in print. For some of us it is an outlet, a place to experiment almost anonymously and for people to read - anonymously - occasionally offering feedback - and still be anonymous. For others I think it may be like a diary and for some a self-focused newspaper. I like the idea of it being a writer's notebook but that still doesn't solve the question of why I don't just make it private so only I can read it - if I had a writer's notebook for things as long as my posts tend to be, you can bet I wouldn't have copies of it lying around for friends to read. So why blog? 55 people read my blog in the past 30 days...does that matter in the big scheme? No, not at all. Did what I wrote make a difference? Nope. Ok. Still stuck.

How about this - what if by writing our ideas, musings, written experimentations, and creative juices and then reading those of others, we are 'stretching' and widening our perspective. Whether we are hearing about other parts of the world or considering opinions that may be counter our own, we are strengthening our experience, our thought patterns, and even perhaps our knowledge base. OK - but still, why bother?

You got me there but I think it comes back to thoughts in print - there it is; my thoughts matter to at least *me* because they are in print and in this day in age if something is in print - or digital print, it matters to someone somewhere. Even if the majority of the people who see it are in CT or CA. (thanks google - that's cool too).