Why? WHY!?!?

A currently indiscernibly number of days ago I was chatting on the phone about my site, my writing, etc, and the question was posed: Why do I write about the things I write about, why so publicly, why, why why? I had to think about it, and the answer I came up with doesn’t really jive with what most “bloggers” say.

Of course, I think it might be something like how, in Circle K, the question always comes up in caucus “What’s the most important of the three aspects of Circle K?” (Non-CKI folk: the three aspects are “service, leadership, and fellowship”) The “correct” answer that people always say is “service” because, duh, “we’re a service organization.”

I call bullshit. Service doesn’t make CKI what it is… any fool can go do service in any organization or no organization. Service doesn’t make Circle K what it is. It may be our drive, focus, and mission, but it is not the defining aspect.

Bloggers tend to do the same thing. They always talk about how they write for themselves. I’m not sure I buy it. At least not totally. In the most recent Carnival, La Shawn Barber’s entry Blog Envy discusses those folks who show up and want what they apparently believe that they’re owed: a quick rise to massive readership and participation. Why do they think that? Well, because they’re so brilliant, obviously!

Now, La Shawn doesn’t, but most bloggers would then proceed to deride these types of people for not blogging for themselves. In fact, if you look at the comments to that entry, you’ll see some of that. I call bullshit. Sorry folks, I just don’t believe that you go to all sorts of trouble to create and keep a web presence, fully open and public, so that you can write for yourself. There’s way too much overhead to justify it. If we were REALLY writing for ourselves we’d be doing it locally, in word documents or something like that. Fact is, though, that not only do we have WEBSITES, we go to great lengths to make sure that our readers can comment, contact us, and link to us from THEIR websites. We keep meticulous statistics or, at the very least, keep a very close eye on where our referrers are coming from.

Of course, we can’t paint with too wide a brush — I could create some scenarios where blogging is the perfect tool for personal writing for oneself, and I’m sure that there exist those people who REALLY DO write for them.

For the vast majority, though, I’d bet that they write for their readers much more than they let on or would like to admit. During that phone call I had to come to that conclusion — I don’t write for me, here. Why would I? All of these things that I write? I write them because I think of them… and I certainly don’t need to post something to a website to remember that I thought it. I have private posts (log-in to read them) and I even have the option of making it TOTALLY private — for Pete’s Eyes Only. Since the inception of this whole journal/blogging thing, I’ve written less than a half-dozen totally private posts. Why? Because I very, very seldom see the need, purpose, or point.

The conclusion I reached was that I write to entertain or inform my friends, family, and other readers. Whether it’s my mom (Hi, Mom!), someone I met back in the mid 90’s and have been close with since, or some random person who clicks on a link somewhere else — it’s not for me.

I like getting comments, I think it’s neat that this month has been the biggest month (traffic wise) in the history of the site, and I’m amazed that I get hundreds of visits a day. Sure, lots of those people are friends and family trying to keep up with me because, when it comes to keeping up on the phone, I’m totally inept. But it’s cool. I get to come on here, bitch, moan, act smart, act stupid, act out, and whatever else I want… and people show up to read it.

Why? Hell if I know. But I’m glad y’all do, because it’d be boring as hell if I were the only one reading.