why i blog

I’ve been thinking about this for sometime, the whole notion of a semi-public forum for some of my inner most thoughts. As some friends and other bloggers hang up their hats, I’ve taken it to heart what this whole thing means to me anyway.

When I started to blog it was merely to get me writing again. And it worked. Some days are better than others. Some days my dribble is coherent, some days I start looking to enroll in writing classes. But, the purpose was never to perfect, but merely to begin.

Shortly after I began blogging I also began to be obsessed with my statistics. There were actually days were I would stare at my computer screen for hours and refresh the page, willing someone, anyone, to hit my sight and read my head. Then, after the stats barely and steadily never really grew, I gave up the pipe dream of being the next undiscovered would-you-like-to-write-a-book-because-we-love-your-blog writer. I started just to write whatever came into my head. There are a few areas I don’t delve into, but for the most part, anything is fair game.

Friends who read the site say that it is so me, that it’s just like talking to me. I don’t see that. I feel that I write a great deal differently than I talk, but then again, I don’t listen to myself. Only a handful of friends are brave enough to click their mouse this way. I think to a lot of people this whole thing is really weird. I’m not one of those people. Sometimes I wonder about what my friends will think when I do write really personal stuff, but I’m an open book with my friends, I put my heart my sleeve, why not also on an internet site? It sounded like a good idea to me.

Over the year plus that I’ve blogged, I’ve collected a good deal of insights and tidbits and just stuff from my head that I realized needed to be written down. Everything has a personal slant. I have not written much fiction hear even though the sidebar on the right says, “not everything here is true, though based on events in my life, I take fictional liberties.” That has happened only a handful of times and I’m not telling you which. I doubt now that I could even remember the truth from non-truth.

The blog has become my snapshots. Remember in college when you seemed to always have a camera around? I never take pictures anymore; my 35mm is stashed away in its camera bag for protection. My photo albums and the rotation of pictures in frames have become stagnant. But, in my mind I am constantly freezing a moment in order to write it down later. And once it’s written, I let it go.

There have been a few dares that I’ve made with myself, a few big questions I’ve asked and a few propositions. I’ve rarely followed through with them simply because after I write them I let them sail away like a boat on the ocean that forgets it’s home port. It’s OK, that’s part of the point. I need to let things out sometimes. Sometimes they reflect the true me and I think these are the times where my friends says, “that’s so Anna,” but there are times when I just have to write it down and let it go.

I’ve been thinking lately that this thing I’ve done, this blog, is a huge freaking window into my head. Why this never dawned on me before, I don’t know. The need to write somehow superceded and overwhelmed the logic part of my brain. And so, I’ve realized that anyone with internet access could read page after page and get a pretty good feel for me, my likes and dislikes, how to woo me, how to be my friend, what to cook for me, what movies to watch, probably even what flowers to buy me (tulips), and after a year and change this is beginning to worry me. Why have I done this? Why do I blog? And I can honestly say it is because of these two things:

1) I have to and
2) I have absolutely no idea.