Do you read Slate? I do, every morning. Though, I have to confess that I only read maybe 33% of the stories. Anyway, today, there's an interesting column about why NOT to blog. Or rather, why one person decided not to blog. She felt blogging was keeping her from writing that book she'd been meaning to write, which is interesting, since many authors keep blogs. It's not unusual to be able to write books and blog posts.
But it got me thinking, and the truth is, I blog because I don't want to write. I mean that I have no ambitions to write books, or even have things published. I don't feel like the "Great American Novel" is in me, and I certainly don't think that anything I say merits some sort of published book of essays. I'm no Mimi SmartyPants, that's for sure. I may know my way around language, and occasionally I write a sentence that's nice, but mostly that just makes me not-torture when it comes to emails. I blog because I like language, and I like using it, but I can't ever imagine using it in any sort of way that leads to money. Which includes book contracts, I suppose.
I probably, in all reality, started blogging because I needed an outlet, and I was on the precipice of a great depression. Blogging became something that just might have pulled me back from the worst of that depression, and I know that however I felt, I posted nearly every single day. That's possibly why I still do it, because it has some value in my life in that way. Or more probably, I blog because I don't journal, and I've always wanted to. I'm shit at journaling, however, and I don't seem to be quite as bad at this. So it's stuck.
So I can assure you that I will never quit blogging because it interferes with my writing. This IS my writing.
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