To Blog...

Or Not To Blog...

A friend asked me recently on facebook whether or not I thought she should start a blog. Here is what I told her:

As far as I'm concerned there are only two good reasons I do anything. One is that I want to do it and the other is that I have to do it. I don't believe in doing something I don't want to do or don't have to do because I think I should do it. "Good deeds" turn out better when I'm feeling it than when I'm doing them because I "should". So as much as possible, I wait for that feeling.

So if you want to have a blog or feel that you have to have a blog, I would say, Do it, and then see after awhile if you still feel the same way.

Personally, I love my blog and I love "blogging". I love organizing my thoughts and putting words together that best express what I'm thinking or feeling. And I love offering those thoughts to the world. I don't really care if anyone reads the thing or not. In fact hardly anyone does. I think I have 4 or 5 "followers". Who the Hell has time to read blogs? Most of the ones that have a lot of followers have subject matter, usually politics or sex or some specialized help knowledge, that people are charged and passionate about.

Mine is called "The Unforced Life" and is about all kinds of things related to my life, T'ai-Chi and music. It's not the "diary" kind of blog. It's more like a series of articles. Many of the posts I've put up started as fb comments, rants or discussions.

Even if no one reads the thing, I really love putting the posts together and then offering them to the world. I love the state of mind I get in when I'm working on finding the right words. I'm in that state right now, writing this.

I also, really like having these articles that I write available to forward to people or to mention and/or link in fb posts. Someone will post something on fb that reminds me of one of my posts. Instead of re-hashing all my ideas on the subject, I can add a shorter comment and then add a link to the blog post.

For instance, if I had a post called "To Blog...Or Not To Blog", I would have written a shorter comment here and then linked to that post. In fact I think I will turn what I've written here this morning into a post with that title, should anyone else ever ask me if they should have a blog... Be well and I hope this has been at least a little helpful.