Why Blog?

An article in the New York Times Magazine this week discusses why people blog. It is by Emily Gould who used to work for Gawker. She describes herself as an “over-sharer”, and attributes her blogging, and the problems that resulted from it, to that.

There are blogs in which people mainly discuss their personal lives, although I don’t read any of them. The blogs I read are the ones which are mainly about ideas, and that is what I aspire to do with this blog. I don’t think I’ve ever been an “over-sharer.” I do believe that everybody thinks all the time–in some ways, I think that television, pulp novels, etc., are for most people a way to slow the mind down. For me this blog is a way to get that thinking down on virtual paper and out of my head. Getting ideas out of my head frees up more head space and keeps them from spinning around inside.

It helps that I enjoy writing, or at least that I want to think of myself as the sort of person who enjoys writing. That may be the only significant issue that divides people who write blogs from people who don’t: whether or not they like to write. Or, in the case of video blogs, take pictures.