Why Blog?

I enjoy writing which is why I blog.  But I also take delight in having anonymous visitors ostensibly reading my posts, new and old.  Many readers who know me only by name volunteer a few nice words about a particular post or how they enjoy my writing style. I take great pleasure in entertaining people and the rare occasion that a blog is truly entertaining, engaging or funny.

My blog is a little more than 3 ½ years old with 237 posts which averages to about 5 ½ posts per month….a little more than once a week.  Nothing to write home about, but I write when my fingers carry me to the keyboard, not because I feel I need to, have to or are expected to.  Its almost like going to the bathroom…there is little thought in that decision.  So does my movement to the computer to blog resemble the movement to and in the bathroom, sometimes with similar results.

Never expecting for my blog to have any real credibility or value, which it categorically doesn’t, my individual posts have unexpectedly increasingly ranked high on a number of Google searches.  My recent blog on my experience at the 2014 NV Ball Dancesport Championships is an example…..this blog shows up on page 1 of a Google search (understandably, the Google search engine query results are forever changing).  Other dance competitions such as the Blackpool Dance Festival - 2011, Hollywood and Heritage also show my blog very early in the listings.  There are other examples of blogs that also appear very early in Google searches, but I won’t bore you with a further laundry list of meaningless examples.  Suffice it to say, they are not all dance competitions but represent a reasonably wide variety of topics and even people.

Now, I have always been somewhat careful in what I say on these posts realizing that readers may take offense or even revenge on comments made that rubbed them the wrong way.  Sometimes I have gone back to edit individual posts within 24 hours of publishing them that I feel in retrospect may be offensive.  Unfortunately in doing so, I remove some of the more titillating snippets that have potential entertainment value and or humor.  But nothing is worth risking ones life for, not even a funny blog. 

The point is that now, more then ever, my posts may be exposed to a broader reader audience.  I cannot guaranty, as in the past, that they will fall into the abyss of the trillions of web based personal vignettes that are published every day that are found on Page 101 or later on a Google search.  Indeed, I have to contend with the possibility that my posts may indeed influence the views of others, and as a result, this places a burden of responsibility to be objective and honest in my reviews.  I suppose this is nothing more than what you could find on Yelp, Trip Advisor, or websites devoted to reviewing anything from A to Z.   But since I generally do not invest any time or effort in those venues, I am only concerned with the potential for positive and or negative effects of the contents of my individual posts.

Now, what I have written above has almost nothing to do with why I started this writing.  Indeed, in seeing my posts gain forward momentum in Google ranking results, it has strained me to consider the differences with my involvement in blogging in contrast to Facebook.  I remember spending a considerable time in creating a Facebook identity - of the who I wanted to be and the image I wanted to project rather than the true me.  And I remember spending wasted hours thumbing through countless pages of dribble and meaningless comments from “friends” who I barely knew, but nevertheless, who were constantly invading my computer with nonsense that I felt somewhat obliged to read.  This was only one reason for deleting my Facebook account, which I have document in a previous post if anyone is interested.

Facebook and blogging are both forms of social media but the differences are noteworthy.  Anyone who reads my blog has to find it first, it doesn’t come at you with intent and purpose like Facebook or for that matter My Space, Twitter and God knows how many other social media sites that control your every moment and behavior. 

Reading individual blogs is presumably an act of free will.  Either you read the blog periodically or you are searching the web for some specific topic, event, person, place, etc and come across the posting on your Google search. 

Social media sites seem to encircle you with information, presumably welcomed, but nevertheless limited by the audience that you somehow agree to engage, sometimes willfully, sometimes passively, your worth being measured by how many friends you have and the captive audience of your forever expanding community. 

When I posted on my Facebook page, I was sometimes embarrassed to impose my comments on my shallow community of “friends”, not really knowing why I was doing so or the net worth of my investment in time.  Did anyone really give a shit that I came in 1^st in a dance competition?  Did I give a shit when someone posted their news on my Facebook page?

In contrast, I will never know those who have chosen to enter my blog and read whatever posts they desire.  I follow the numbers and the audience with interest and curiosity but I never know why one posting suddenly becomes popular and has a few hundred views and others stay relatively quiet.  I get very few comments so I really have little insight into my reader’s interests or backgrounds, except they come from countries around the globe.  And that is the intriguing part. 

I write because I enjoy writing and to relive the moment.  But I also take great pleasure in being read and the increasing audience that I have been getting as well as the high Google ranking results of late. Thank you all!