Why Blog Now?

I have long held a dislike of blogs. I have good reason for that, too. Too often it's a used as a substitution for actually communicating with your friends in the give-and-take of a conversation. There's nothing private, or personal, or special about a blog. It's just a newsletter and it says, to me, that I am not a close enough or important enough or unique enough friend to someone to warrant speaking directly to.

I know this isn't how most people who use their blogs to share the current events in their life feel, and I don't hold it against them. But it's how I feel, and yes - I am insecure enough to feel that this is a tactful, discreet hint that I need to back off. So I back off, and when my friend(s) don't seem to notice, that tells me that my assumption was correct. I don't care any less for them, but at least I have the comfort of knowing I'm not pestering them and that when/if I do need them they won't be so irritated and tired of me that my phone call or email is unwelcome.

There's also the fact that a lot of the time I just don't have the time to read a dozen or so blogs and respond to them. In IM I can talk to my friends and do other things - like write, or work on homework, or IM with other people, or update lists, or whatever else I need to do. Hey, I'm a multi-tasker. It's what I do. :-)

So, with that said, why have I now decided to become a blogger?

Because blogging is excellent for one thing: sharing thoughts and ideas that you can't expound on in a conversation, but you just need to write down and share. You don't need a give and take in ideas or thoughts you have, and they seldom have reason to come up in conversation. But these beliefs are an integral part of a person and they deserve to be shared among friends and, yes, relatives. It's easy to know the surface of someone, but it's harder to really know the deeper part of a person. The opportunities to do that don't arise often.

So, now I hope to be a consistent blogger with ideas, thoughts, frustrations, rants, happiness, and a whole gamut of other things that I feel a need to write and share - but don't necessary need to have a whole, devoted conversation about - and which I won't know or be hurt when my friends don't read it, don't care to read it, or zone out before I've finished speaking. Yeah, folks, you can tell when someone you're speaking to stops listening. :-) When you stop talking in the middle of the sentence and they never notice it's pretty obvious. :-)

And that's why I choose to blog now. :-)