Why blog?

I'm pretty sure I asked this once before, but now I'm really going to delve into this. I hope some of you (who I know read ;) will take a moment to ponder and comment. For years we locked our diaries and never considered letting anyone peek at our private thoughts. Now, everyone is blogging and often extremely personal info. Why? As a friend of mine asked, "Why on earth would you post stuff for perfect strangers to read?" More to the point, exposing oneself (often literally, as teens do) or even like this blog for someone to delve into and "find me" if they really wanted to. Why??

Yeah, kids do it 1) cause they're naive 2) desperate for interaction. The exposed pics, well that's just ridiculous. But, adults. Thinking, sane folks like us -- why are we blogging? Some folks post their art, political commentaries, travel blogs are really helpful, community service or fund-raising, and some just "because." Initially my Zen Blog (the old one) was to promote Zen/Taoist philosophy but devolved into my rants. And posts of my Grand Canyon trip where I crunched a rock formation in my hand ;)

I know we try to stay anonymous, but that's a joke. I just tried searching myself on google and it's amazing (and scary) what all can be found. I remember Jeff, my "bro" refusing to use a credit card to avoid a paper trail. Now, we get online and basically "let it all hang out." Of course, I've lived online since the 1980's (the BBS days, various forums, web sites, blogs and now twitter.)

Another point is why waste time on this when I should put ALL my writing energy into the money-making book publication process. Does a book blog make sense? A place to promote and sell the book? I think so, but that also means really revealing your identity (unless you publish with a pseudonym.) Well, that will come soon enough. For now, I kind of view this as escape, but how dangerous is it? Come on out of your hidey holes now and COMMENT!!! It truly is a curious phenomenon.