Why I blog

My blog is something of a journal and I write what about what I am thinking about at that time. That is why you sometimes see a string of posts that are very similar because I am thinking about a particular topic a lot, whether headcovering or homeschooling or the church or community. I don’t intend for my blog to be an advocacy engine as much as a sounding board. I try not to look at the sitemeter reports because I don’t want to get into “blogging for hits”. All this blog is and all I ever intended it to be was a place for me to write down my thoughts, what I am focused on, where I see myself falling short, where we need to make changes as a family, what I am reading about. If you don’t agree with what I write, you have lots of options. You can read it and disagree with it. You can read it and disagree and write a comment to that effect. You can stop reading. You can write your own blog which I encourage! I don’t expect to change a single mind with what I write. I do hope that those who read are edified or encouraged in some way, provoked to thought, spurred to study. I also write for my children, to give them a glimpse of what I am thinking about. While I occasionally write something intending to be intentionally provocative, for the most part what you see is just what is on my mind. That will probably never draw many hits and that is O.K. with me.

This may sound terribly selfish, maybe not, but I don’t blog for others. I blog for me. Perhaps it is narcissistic of me to assume that people are interested in reading my thoughts but after all no one is required to read what I have written or to come back. I can hear some people clucking their tongues and wagging their fingers: “I blog for the glory of God!” Sure you do. Blogging is inherently a narcissistic endeavor. There is nothing that stops any of us who blog from writing our thoughts in private, where we would probably be more open and honest. Whatever our other motivations, ultimately we put our thoughts online because we think others are interested in our opinions or what we have to say. There are innumerable blogs out there and chances are someone else has already written a post (and probably better) on any given topic. So why do we blog? We blog because we think that our ideas need to be heard amidst the cacophony of blogs that fill the internet.

That is why I blog. I blog as an outlet for my thoughts. I blog because I think, probably inaccurately, that others might benefit from reading what I am thinking about. I blog because I am not great at talking to my kids. I blog as a mirror for myself, to see where my walk doesn’t match my talk. I blog for lots of reasons and they all have a lot to do with me.