Why I blog...

As Olabimpe asked last week...

How did you get into blogging? I don't go to your school, I just stumbled across this blog when searching fellow Richard Thompson fans. I'm generally interested in why people start.

So, let's take a look back about six years ago now to July 17, 2005. I had my school webpage (long defunct in that form) and had created a page of my favorite books, movies, and albums as well as a rotating selection of some of my favorite links. (I think there might be a vestige of the page around somewhere in my files, in which case I'll do a screencap and post it.)

I liked having the list of my favorites up and had spent some time to create icons for each (a little rocket ship for all the sci-fi books, an Erlenmeyer flask for the science books, and so on - kind of like my to show that something isn't necessarily safe for work.) As the links rotated in and out, however, the ones that rotated out were lost to the ether of the internets, and that didn't please me too much. I wanted to keep track of those.

So I created this blog six or so years ago, back in July 2005. At the time it was a plain black, themeless blob. Since then I've thrown in a rotating header and a couple of unpopular themes before settling, for now at least, on the glorious black and rainbow masterwork that you see before you today. And I've been blogging for six solid years now - more than 2400 blog posts (#2500 will come sometime late summer, in case you were wondering.)

As to why I'm doing this, well there are a number of different reasons. Each of these has carried more or less weight over those six years depending on how things are going inside my head at the time as well as how much feedback I'm getting from each of my constituent groups.

• I blog to keep writing. - This one has been on the wane as you might be able to tell with the shorter blog posts of late. I very much enjoy writing and would like to think that I have some talent in that area, so I see this blog partially as an opportunity for me to turn a few phrases here and there. I'm not a hard working writer (having turned in easily as many first drafts as subsequent drafts in my academic career), so throwing out first drafts like what my blog posts tend to be is pretty much right up my alley.
• I blog to connect with my students. - As our current principal is wont to note, you have to build relationships before you can hope to reach and teach students. Sure I'm awesome in the classroom and my varied interests do drift into my teaching, but the blog gives me a chance to possibly make another few connections with my students, to show them a little more about who I am and what I'm thinking.
• I blog to connect with distant friends. - I've moved from my hometown (N'Albany, IN) as have most of my friends. Gamer's up in Minnesota. CoachSullivan is, admittedly just outside N'Albany. Smamy's back in Indianapolis but has been around the Southeast. GRob's in Michigan. Googs is in Indy.We became friends because we were in the same town, but we've spread ourselves out around the midwest a bit. This blog lets me maintain some contact with these guys. (Don't know why this never took up with my female friends - Kristin the Red, Tracy, Lexi, anybody else?
• 
  I blog to point out to and discuss things with my local friends. - When I hear something on NPR, when I see something on a blog, when I have a thought to discuss later, I often throw those ideas on the blog so that I can talk about them in person later. Calen's the most common recipient here.
• I blog to keep track of what I've read, heard, or seen. - Sometimes when I can't remember the name of a particular book or the address of a website that I used last year. Often when I search on the blog, I can find what I'm looking for pretty quickly.
• I blog because I said I would blog. - I set things up initially promising to blog every day, every single day without fail. That's kind of gone by the wayside as Sundays have become quasi-off days, but I've been blogging every week day plus links on Saturday for pretty much the entirety of those six years. There are days when I blog because I said I would blog. Nobody else is calling me on this on the days that I miss here and there, but I know when I miss a day, and it bothers me because I promised myself - and you, I guess - that I would blog every day.
• I blog to voice my opinion. - To whom, I don't know.

The flip side...

• I don't blog to make money. - In my view my largest clientele for this blog are current and former students. I've met these folks through my job, and it wouldn't be right for me to turn that into profit - even via advertising.
• I don't blog to get a giant following. - Yeah, I've paid attention to page views from time to time, most especially when I first found out about Google Analytics (and just now when I corrected the coding so my account will work again). My readers ebbs and flows - particularly up during the school year and the school week, down over the summer and weekends. Even at its high point, I wasn't getting more than 100 unique visits per week, so this isn't going to get me anywhere near Ashton Kucher's bizillion Facebook friends or anything.
• I don't blog to get a book contract or a tv show. - In order to do either of those, I would need a gimmick more consistent and themed than 'crap a interests a chemguy.'
• I don't blog to keep a diary. - This blog is linked from my school webpage. I'm not putting out my most private of thoughts, my unprofessional (and typically kept internal) musings and complaints about my supervisors or  my students, or my dirty jokes. I have outlets for each of those, and they aren't this blog.
• I don't blog to 'work things out'. - I'm not thinking out loud here. I'm providing an - I hope - entertaining service for my readers. I'm not (most of the time) looking for help in return. I'm not providing myself with a digital therapy couch, either.

How's that for a 'why do you blog' answer, Olabimpe?