I have three blogs. There's this one, which is usually pretty serious. I have another one called Animal Tales at http://wagginganimaltales.blogspot.com/ which is daily observations and attempts at humor. The third blog is called Technically Speaking at http://techequipment.blogspot.com/, which is where I make humorous comments about my work environment under the guise of an official company blog.
Why?
At least in the other two blogs family and coworkers occasionally read the entries. In this blog, to my knowledge, no one reads the material. So the question becomes, why do it if no one is reading it?
I was asked this question by a business associate. It was in the context of a situation where I had two people visiting from a company, one who had read the Technically Speaking blog, and the other who had no idea that I had any blogs. His rhetorical question was why anyone would blog at all. No answer would have satisfied this person, he was actually making a statement, not asking a question. His statement was that it was worthless to write a blog, whether anyone read it or not, but especially if no one read it.
If no one ever read my blogs, it would still be worth it to me. The act of organizing your thoughts and explaining an idea is a useful exercise because it helps to define and refine what you think and believe. It's sort of like practicing a speech before you give it, you familiarize yourself with it. Having an external listener, even if it is a theoretical or fictitious one, helps to focus the explanation to someone outside yourself that is unfamiliar with your thoughts. This is useful because you make no assumptions that anything is a given, nothing is taken for granted, everything must be explained.
Writing is not a new thing for me. I got a Diary for a gift when I was in fifth grade and found that I liked writing down what happened to me and expressing my ideas and feelings about life. When I was in Junior High School, I started keeping a Dream Journal. This was after I read an article about how your dreams work. The premise of this idea was that you have a conscious mind that is aware of itself and under your control and consists of your inner audible thoughts. However, you also have a subconscious mind, the 90% that you "don't use" that sits quietly in the background and observes everything and never speaks to you directly. This subconscious is powerful and very aware, but can only communicate through dreams. It's as if the barrier between the two halves of your mind breaks down under sleep. The subconscious mind is aware of the separation and the dream conduit, and it spends dream time trying to send your conscious mind messages. These messages are usually things that are important or interesting that your conscious mind is missing, but your subconscious mind picked up on and wants to call attention to.
The subconscious is almost like a foreigner, speaking a different language. You don't have a dream that says, "you need to ask this girl out" or "you should cook more often" or "look out for your coworker, she is undermining you to your boss." Instead, the dream makes a little story and weaves it with emotions and memories. I found that by writing all the dreams down, I found they were rich in subcontext. You aren't just trapped in a dim and dirty room in the dream, there is terror in the very fabric of the dream. You don't just walk up to a friend on the street in the dream, you walk up knowing that you haven't spoken in years and that you are finally going to confront him about something that bothers you. In a flash, there are whole background histories embedded in the dream, something that was either in the background or took a second to realize, but might take several minutes to write down in a dream journal. It's sort of like computer zip files. Tiny little packets that open up and are full of lots of information.
The point of keeping a dream journal is to discover what it is that the dreams are trying to tell you. It takes practice and familiarization, but eventually, you get pretty good at it. The point is that you have to spend time at it and learn how to make it happen.
The same is true with blogging. It is a way of practicing explaining something and hopefully, fleshing out the subject and gaining a deeper understanding.
So I have to admit that I really do enjoy writing this blog, which I consider a chance to discuss the deep thoughts and revelations that occur to me, whether they are political, emotional, or philosophical. It helps me to feel like I am figuring out big questions in life and how things work. I have always had daydreams about being that teacher that really gets people to understand things or writing editorials for a newspaper that people really find to be interesting and insightful. The only problem is that I analyze things in too much detail and do not distill messages down to their simple core. I am definitely more of a blogger and not a Twitterer. I often think that no one wants to listen to this shit. I am also writing a novel that has been kicking around in my head for a long time. I started it, and really got going on it, but then I realized that it would not have broad appeal, it would not be a best seller, probably not even get past an editor. Still, I enjoyed writing it, and should not have let the thought that it was not going to be a bestseller stop me from continuing work on it.
If no one reads it, why write? You could also ask why anyone would keep a diary, especially one that you don't intend to let anyone read. After all, a blog or a diary isn't exactly like a diet journal where you write down everything you eat each day. It isn't raw facts that don't have any deeper truth, it isn't a dull accounting of mundane events. But it does have something in common with the a diet journal. If you don't write down what you eat, you often have a complete misconception about the quantity and quality of your diet. Write it down and you can't pretend you didn't do it. With writing your thoughts, memory can't rob you of what you thought or how you felt then, at that moment. You can read it years later and think it was ridiculous, but you can't deny that you said it or thought it.
Actually, there is a much deeper reason for writing a blog. I don't find many opportunities to talk at length about what I think with a real person. I don't know many people interested in the same things as I am. So it is good to have an outlet for what's really on my mind. Also, I am 46 years older than my son, meaning that he will live a significant portion of his life after I have passed away. I don't know how old he will be when I die, but whatever that age is, the chances are that he will not fully know or understand me. And as time passes after I am gone, he will develop a whole life that will not have me in it. There will be times when he might wonder what I would think or wish he could talk with me. There will also be a time when memories of what I was like will begin to fade, and he will forget much of what I was like. But if some of what I am is written down, then I will never completely die, and I will still be able to share some thoughts with him from across time and beyond the grave. I know that sounds sad and morbid, but it feels comforting and self indulgent, like eating something deliciously bad for you and not writing it in your diet journal.
[Actually finished 4/30/11, not back in February when I jotted down the idea and saved it to be written down later.]
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