Who Are You Blogging For?

One of the old timers asked why I don’t update my blog seven days a week anymore and told me they wondered who I was blogging for.

“Nobody comments on blogs anymore and if you are not getting any comments who are you blogging for?”

I didn’t have to think about my answer because I knew the gut response is always the same but I decided to take a moment to try and dig deeper to see if there was more than the I write first for me and then for you.

So I figured it wouldn’t hurt to try to dig around in the archives to see how many times I have addressed the question and to try to figure out how much has changed.

I stumbled onto The Sloppy Kisser and knew it had to be included because it is a story and it wasn’t me airing out my thoughts about this and that.

Flipped and clicked my way over to What I See- Part One and What I See Five Years Later and realized I have to write part 3.

Why?

Because that will provide a quick snapshot of life in 2005, 2010 and 2015.

When I read the first two parts I smile because I remember the man I was for both of them and recognize I am not quite him anymore.

Too much has happened, too many major changes have led to an evolution that would have taken place anyway but is probably more significant than it might have otherwise been.

This time in life is all about who I am on the way to becoming and not who I once was.

Life Changes Are A Writer’s Best Friend

If you want to tell a good story that is entertaining, educational and informative then you are going to want to get up close and comfortable with life changes.

They don’t have to be good changes any more than they have to be painful ones because both are useful.

Real life experiences do more than provide credibility, they help you paint a better picture for the readers.

When my son tells me he is nervous about entering school or when my daughter gives me a list of places she is willing to move to and those she isn’t I can smile and say I understand.

I know all about children and changes and can write about it from multiple perspectives.

Ask me to talk about what it is like to lose your job and fight to keep things afloat and I can tell you about it at length.

I bought a home and felt like I owned a castle and then when things went to hell knew the time had come to sell it because if I didn’t I wouldn’t get a dime out of it and all I had worked so hard for would be taken.

Those experiences are weighed against the joy and laughter of life, measured in small increments called moments in time.

Most possessions have become of limited interest to me, except for the few have morphed from ordinary into extraordinary.

Blogging at times is a funny. unpredictable and unreliable beast.

The posts you are most proud of because they are finely crafted examples of your finest writing are often ignored, passed over and overlooked.

Replaced by silly tales about how to hard boil eggs or stories about how you tore your pants and spilled coffee on our shirt.

Laughed at by stories of the time you tried to change a diaper and were peed on by a baby whose bladder couldn’t possibly hold that much liquid but somehow did.

My stories about supermarket mayhem, fist fights with Santa Claus and drunk and horny clowns always out perform the posts that I think display the best examples of my writing abilities.

It used to bother me because I was worried that I was developing a brand that was too narrow in its focus but once I took a hard look at it things changed.

Why?

Because I am a writer and a good writer is required to make people feel something.

Those posts did their jobs and they helped provide opportunity and reason to continue.

They also helped build a foundation for writing other posts that are not necessarily based upon stories that have the traditional beginning, middle and end but are more…abstract in nature.

If I had any particular criticism of the abstract it is that they are less likely to inspire comments than some of the others.

Why You Have To Keep Writing

The reason why you have to keep writing and the reason I keep going is because I can’t imagine not doing it.

But it is also because of the unpredictability of it all. I never know for certain what people will love, like or hate so I keep swinging.

I like swinging for the fences but I never forget that sometimes a post that fails may still contain some gold within.

You never know when you might coin a phrase or parse together a few sentences that are both magical and magnificent.

That alone is worth it to me.

What about you?