Why Blog?

While that may seem like an easy question, it also brings up other questions. Why do I read other's blogs? Why do people read my blog? What is my purpose with blogging? What do I hope to accomplish? So I am going to now share some of my thoughts.

I started blogging about 3 years ago because I was flattered, when a local blogger, Bob, at LynchburgVirginia blog invited me to be a contributor. I enjoyed letting others know about events going on in our community that were often free. I also enjoyed sharing news I ran across that I thought was interesting. Sometimes I had something to add, mostly, I just wanted to point out something others may have missed. Our blog was hugely successful, but then it became a burden. We felt like we had to keep contributing every day. We felt the push to keep up with more controversial stuff to keep people coming back. We were in the top 50,000 blogs (out of 3 million) and then we all just got burnt out (there were several of us contributing at that point). And we stopped, pretty much just cold. Bob has gone on to discover he has amazing photography talents as you can see over at Flicka.

I decided blogging just took too much time and energy and I was done. Besides, what was the point? Who wanted to hear what I had to say? Well, about three months later, I was lured into the blogging world again. This time I set up a blog of my own at Homeschoolblogger .Within 5 months I had brought in a few thousand visitors from around the world. I was mostly blogging about other stories. Sharing nature stories and animal stories and archaeology stories that I found interesting. I hosted a carnival once and I had contests. I loved seeing that people were interested in what I had to write. And since writing has been a passion for me since I was in 5th grade, this made me feel awesome inside! But again as time passed, I became busy and couldn't spend as much time blogging...And then Homeschoolblogger had more and more technical problems and I just gave up trying to work through them.

Meanwhile my husband continued to blog. I missed it. I decided to set up this blog. But now I am in a dilemma. Because I am no longer part of a community, the traffic to my site has dropped off. And I feel like I am cheating when I simply share stories about animals that others could go find on their own if they wanted. And I don't often have deep philosophical things to discuss all the time...So I am back to why am I here? And if you are still reading this, you may be wondering the same thing.

I am here because I love to write. I always have and always will. In everything I do, writing has been a large part of it. I am also going to take a page from my husband's book. I am going to keep track here of news and events that I find interesting. I love great pictures, particularly of animals, so you will find those here too. And I am going to record events in my family's life. I haven't done a lot of this in the past. While I sometimes enjoy reading stories of other's every day lives, the photos of their lives interest me more and I have hestiated to share our own story. But blogging is ultimately for the blogger. It is my record out there for anyone who cares to read it.

Maybe I will make you smile, laugh or cry. Maybe I will teach you something new. Maybe I will make you run screaming into the night, wondering why you were here. What I will definitely do is provide you with fun photos to look at. Short articles (I don't like really long blog entries and really should cut about half of this one out.). I will share the stories of my life so that one day, my children can go back through and read them and see their history in black and white.

So why do you blog? What do you like in a blog entry? Why are you here? Enquiring minds want to know!