I’ve become a
big fan of blogs. Anyone who visits here
will know how often I blog, how I do it and what I talk about. I also enjoy reading other peoples blogs and when
possible I like share my comments on what the author has made me think about.
Yet I’m
struck by how I find blogging simultaneously therapeutic & frustrating as
well as rewarding & disappointing. There. I’ve fessed up! Let me explain the background a little...
Summer was
quiet on the blogging front. It felt
that plenty of others were similarly distracted with other things or just
waiting until everyone was back at work.
Yet I found myself often thinking about what was happening around me and
could I blog about it. What would I
say? How would I frame it? The unanswered
questions I was struggling with. The
things I didn’t fully understand yet.
What I kept
coming back to was my attraction to and support of blogging versus the
emotional rollercoaster it was subjecting me to. What was going on? Did I have the wrong attitude? Was the issue mine alone? It’s a thorny issue but one that I want to
explore here.
Why Blog?
I’ve
deliberately not trawled the web looking for research or opinion on why people
blog. It’s not that I’m not interested - it's just not a question that I want answered by supposed "gurus". The
question behind the question is actually why do I blog? What are my expectations? What am I hoping to achieve?
So far, I think there
are only 3 reasons to go to the effort of blogging :
Commercial
You
want to market yourself or your thought leadership and support your business
efforts or standing as an expert. You
may be a consultant or a charity. The
end result you want to achieve is a mixture between engagement and promotion.
Altruistic
You
have a lot to say and a lot to give. Your
thinking and writing is useful to others, valued even. The end result is the giving of knowledge or
opinion, not what you get back from it in terms of business or maybe even response.
Exploration
You
want to share what you are thinking & experiencing with a view to learning
more. The process of writing the blog itself
might be the exploration & the learning.
Sometimes the learning might come from the feedback you receive. You might be an employee in an organisation,
unemployed or even running a business – it doesn’t matter.
I’ve come to
the view that people never blog just because they like writing. If it was the joy of writing alone they would
do it in a manner that was less conspicuous...
wouldn’t they?
I also think
that if your blog is for Commercial or Altruistic reasons then there is certainly
a degree of ego at play (when is this not the case!). You want to know that what you are writing
about is valued. Whereas if your blog is
for Exploration then perhaps ego is less relevant.
Why do I Blog?
Where I’m
coming to with this is an uneasy sense that perhaps my blog is unwittingly a
mixture of all three and that this is the cause of the emotional rollercoaster. I’m still not sure.
What I do
know is that I need to resolve or possibly come to terms with the fact that I
find blogging simultaneously therapeutic & frustrating as well as rewarding
& disappointing.
What are your
thoughts? Is there a better way of
looking at this? How does blogging make
you feel? Why do you blog? What are your expectations? What are you hoping to achieve?
About the Photo
The tree seems to be a Kapok Tree. The photo was taken from a hammock on holiday as I was
pondering this subject. It seemed
curious that the thorns were clearly to keep away those who would do harm but
allow access to those who wouldn’t cause damage. Humans had already chipped away the defences
lower down leaving the tree scarred but supposedly more approachable. I think there's a parallel here with blogging. Personally, I’d rather be an ant working in a system
climbing to the top than be seen as a threat to be repelled or causing irreparable damage.
