Why Blog?

For those of us who write and post blogs, why do we do it?



For readers of this blog, who may or may not write blogs or your own, why do you read blogs?

I’ve been thinking about this as I’ve noticed the recent demise of three blogs I used to read.

For those who read Gas Guy, you know that his blog is no longer up on Blogger. After he came out and told readers he really was not a ‘gas guy,’ didn’t live in Memphis and was a grad student studying literature, I suppose he felt the need to remove his blog.

A blog that I linked to, Scorpio M, is also no longer available on Blogger. Scorpio M was one of the first blogs to link to this one. I actually sent her an email asking her if she would take a look at my blog, and if she liked it, would she link to me in exchange for a link to hers. She agreed. I always found her blog well written and very entertaining, especially when she talked about sex.

She, too, decided to quit blogging and pulled her blog from Blogger. Within a week, a new blog was up under the same name. It was a sex blog.

I removed the link. Okay, I read a few posts, but then I removed the link. This is a Family blog, after all!

A guy named Ryan also pulled his blog off Blogger about a month ago after writing something that apparently offended quite a few people. He apologized profusely, and then put up a final post saying he could no longer continue to post and shut down his blog.

Gas Guy and Scorpio M were popular blogs, based on the number of comments I observed when I read them. Ryan’s blog seemed to be getting off the ground.

So why did they go away?

I read somewhere recently that about 50,000 blogs are started each day. Everyone has a different reason for starting a blog. Many are online diaries. Many are written to advance a specific cause, point of view or political purpose. Many are written simply to entertain.

Some blogs are a way for people to keep up with family and friends. Rather than send many emails back and forth, a blog is created to share stories of family activities with other family members and relatives. It’s a convenient way to let everyone keep up with what a person or family is doing, share pictures and get comments and feedback from others.

Some bloggers write because they hope to be ‘discovered’ and get a chance to blog professionally for a company or get noticed by a magazine editor and get a freelance opportunity. Others are looking for a book contract or are actively writing a book.

Still others write from a sense of purpose or mission. What they have to say is so important, they are doing the world a favor just by making their wisdom available to the great, unenlightened masses.

I suspect that the novelty of blogging wears off after a while for some people. After that first heady rush of putting something online, and actually having someone read it, it may get old quickly for some people, especially if they don’t get many readers or they get some negative feedback.

So why do I blog?

It started as a lark. I wanted to see if I could do it. I wondered if I could write anything that someone else would find interesting. It started slowly. Reading my first dozen posts now is painful and embarrassing. But over time I seemed to find a voice that felt comfortable, felt right. It was fun to put up stories and see that people would actually read them. I enjoy the comments and email from readers.

More amazing to me is that people actually care enough about the antics of Chris and Tommy, plus an occasional irreverent pondering from me, to come back on a regular basis. I receive regular visits from people all over the USA as well as several other countries. Many of you stop by every other day or so to see if there are new posts. Some of you leave your thoughts, most of you don’t. But I know you’ve been by.

How do I know? For those of you who blog, you may use a stat tracker like Site Meter, or some other service, to track your visitors. If you do, you know what it tells you. For those readers who are not bloggers, you may notice an icon on this blog for Site Meter. It’s right there underneath the links and archives. If you click on that icon nothing happens (I think). When I click on it, it takes me to a site that displays information about how many visitors come to my site, where they come from, how long they stay.

Using this tool I can see how many people visited this blog each hour, each day, each week and month. I can see which city, state and country the last 100 visitors came from. I can see, for some visitors, the host URL the visit originated from. I can see how many pages were viewed.

Sometimes I struggle to think of something interesting to say. While my life is wonderful, it is not always exciting. For those of you who are married, with small children, working at a job outside the home and trying to keep everything in balance, you can relate to the concept of simply trying to get through the day without things falling through the cracks. Not that it is as struggle, but it often is a challenge.

And by the very nature of this life many parts of the day are routine, sometimes mundane. Often lacking in compelling storylines. Yet, in the very mundane-ness, routine-ness and same-ness of the days, there are often those little things that happen, especially with the kids, that will a little thought can be made into a story that might be a bit more interesting.

For example, I could write a post that talked about Chris and Tommy playing with the toy farms sets we have. In straight narrative, they would sound rather boring, yet they would be an accurate depiction of the days’ event. With a bit of thought, going out on a limb, I tried to make it more interesting in posts like this one and its sequel.

As a man who married and fathered children later in life than many other men, one of my occasional recurring themes is feeling old. I could just tell you I feel old and give you a couple of examples. But who wants to read an old man griping about how old he is? I don’t. So I tried to find an interesting way to say the same thing, with a wry smile on my face, acknowledging that while I may be chronologically old, I try to stay young at heart. I may or many not have succeeded in this flight of fancy or this tale of triumph snatched from the jaws despair.

Have you traveled with small kids? Then you know what that’s like. But if I were to write a post about that it would sound negative and whiny. I tried to put a different spin on the concept with this entry.

Do I think any of these posts were great? No. But I enjoyed writing them. I enjoy knowing that people from around the world make a point, once in a while, to read what I have to say. Maybe it’s an ego thing. But I prefer to think of it as sharing ideas with people I have not met, and would never have been able to communicate with were it not for the blog.

For me, that’s the reward. That’s the reason I blog. The comments and emails are a bonus. I’m not writing a book or looking to be discovered. To know that there are people I’ve never met who find some form of entertainment in reading about my family and our life is rewarding to me. It’s kind of like putting a message in a bottle and throwing it out to sea, hoping someone will find it and read it. Only in this case, I know people are reading it. People I’ve never met in placed I’ve never been.

To me, that’s cool.

So I’d like to thank everyone who reads this blog. I don’t know most of your names, unless you’ve emailed me or left a comment with your Blogger name. For the majority of you, I know nothing about you individually, except what city you may live in (Site meter sometimes shows the location of your Internet Provider) or where you may work or go to school.

By far the majority of readers come from the USA. So I’d like to offer greetings to and thanks for reading to readers from:
Anchorage and Fairbanks, AK;
Birmingham, AL;
Newhope, AR;
Phoenix, AZ;
San Diego, Berkeley, Belvedere Tiburon, Hayward, Chico, Alameda, Mountain View, Murrieta and San Francisco, CA;
Boulder, Kittredge and Colorado Springs, CO;
West Haven, Staffordville and Stamford, CT;
Washington, DC;
Tampa and Ft. Lauderdale, FL;
Atlanta, Shannon and Norcross, GA;
Honolulu, HI;
Independence and West Des Moines, IA;
Chicago, Saint Jacob, Clarendon Hills, Clochester and Beardstown, IL;
Wichita, KS;
Boston, Berlin, Hyde Park, Holliston, Wellesley Hills and Peabody, MA;
Baltimore, MD;
Portland, ME
East Lansing, Moline, Portage and Farmington, MI;
Minneapolis and Saint Paul, MN;
Springfield, Moscow Mills and Fort Leonard Wood, MO;
Cary, Fort Bragg and Paw Creek, NC;
Omaha, NE
Londonderry, NH;
Piscataway, NJ;
NYC and Buffalo, NY;
Brady Lake and Kent, OH;
Beaverton, OR;
York, Pittsburgh and Sellersville, PA;
Lexington, North Charleston and Spartanburg, SC;
Hendersonville, Westpoint and Nashville, TN;
Austin, Dallas, Houston, Leander, Plano, Pflugerville and Grand Prairie, TX;
Falls Church and Vienna, VA;
Seattle, Medina and Bainbridge Island, WA;
Whitman and Morgantown, WV;

Here’s a shout out to the students, faculty, administrators and employees at TCU, NYU, Rutgers, Berkeley, Kent State, West Virginia University, Santa Clara University, The University of Alabama, and The University of Waikato in Hamilton, New Zealand. Did I miss your school? Let me know! And thanks for taking the time to read this, but, um, shouldn’t you really be studying or teaching or something?

So you’re reading this blog at work, are you? Well, if you’re working at Wells Fargo, WEDU TV in Tampa-St. Pete, Wind River Commercial Grade Linux, the law firm of Colson Hicks Eidson, or Amerisure Insurance, a great big thanks. Are you hiring? Because if you’re reading at work, I’d like to be writing at work. Let your boss know I’m great at looking really busy!

So you like to read about Chris and Tommy, eh? A big thanks to all the Canadian readers of The Family Man. Hello to London, Ottawa and Lobo Township, Ontario; Mtn-Royal and Longueuil, Quebec; Aroostook, Bon Accord, Mouth of Keswick and Fredericton, New Brunswick. When I was a little kid playing hockey in Syracuse, NY, I went to a hockey camp in Guelph, Ontario two summers in a row. Love Canada!

Hey, mates, thanks for checking in from Australia! Thanks for reading The Family Man in Sydney and West Prymble, New South Wales; Melbourne and Doncaster, Victoria; and also to readers from Northcote and Hamilton, New Zealand.

And last but not least, hello and thanks for reading The Family Man in Africa, Europe and Asia! How is life in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania; Windsor Park Estate, Dakar, Teck Hock, Dakar in Singapore; Delhi, India (is that you, Hari?); Bacoor, Cavite, Phillippines; Oslo, Norway; Chesires, Vaud, Switzerland; Botshol, Utrecht, Netherlands; and Bolton, UK.

Hello to South America. It’s been awhile, but I’ve previously had a reader from Brazil and one from Chile.

No readers from Antarctica – yet.

Stay tuned for more antics from Chris and Tommy. And the occasional flight of fancy from me. Now, occasionally with pictures. And yes, Tony, that was me coaching the Orange Tanks in the last post. One of those boys may or may not be Chris. There were eight on the team and we play four at a time. You get to decide for yourself.

That’s why I blog.

You have lots of choices when it comes to reading blogs. Thank you for choosing this one.

It’s great to be The Family Man.