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Blogging is just one form of content creation and creative expression available to us all on the Web.  The term blog, or weblog, has been around for twelve years.  People were journaling and posting articles and other content on the Web long before that.  People have been self-publishing in other media for hundreds of years.

Plenty of people have advice on the best ways to write a post, getting traffic to your blog, making money from your blog, and so on.

Some people will give you lots of advice on the topic(s) that you should focus your blog on.

It seems like we’ve got this whole blogging thing covered.

But then there’s one other little question that’s the most interesting of all…

WHY?

Why do we blog?  Why do we write? Why do we spend hours upon hours slaving in front of computers?  Why do we wring our brains madly on a regular basis trying to think of new and interesting things to say?  Why do we get frustrated when the words won’t come?

Some people create content in order to make money directly off their blogs by selling advertising, using affiliate links to sell stuff (I do this through my book reviews but I try not to be a PITA about it), selling their own products, etc.  That’s fine.  It’s pretty obvious that some people are trying to make their living directly through selling stuff on their blog and that’s cool.

Then there are tons of us who aren’t focusing on direct monetization, including a huge group of people who aren’t in it for the money at all.

That is what I’m interested in learning about.

Why do we blog?  More specifically, why do YOU blog?

Yes, it’s reader participation time and I’m writing this specifically for YOU. I’m being nosy today and I want to know why you do it.  What are your goals, dreams, aspirations, hopes, and wishes from this powerful medium:

• Are you burning with the desire to get things off your chest?
• Are you trying to change the world?
• Are you bored and in need of something to occupy your mind?
• Are you communicating for someone who can’t speak for themselves?
• Are you using your blog as a platform or stepping stone for bigger and better things?
• Are you using the blog as a way to connect with like-minded people?
• Are you channeling an alien intelligence?
• Etc.

Many of the items in this list apply to me (although I can’t prove that I’m channeling an alien intelligence… yet…)

I’m really curious about this.  I think introspection is a powerful tool and we can learn a lot by examining why we want to do things.  I think we all learn from seeing these ideas in print.

Please share your thoughts in the comment section so we can all learn from this.  If you write your own post about this, link back to this post and I’ll create a link back to you in this post.

Note:  I guess Ian M Rountree and I are tapped into the same hive mind because he’s written a post about blogging as well.

Bill Wren wrote on this topic some time ago in a post called Does blogging need a reason?

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