Blogging and Conversations
The other day I was excitedly telling my friend about how I started blogging, and was in the middle of it when he landed this blow:
“So... do you feel like you don't have enough people to have deep conversations with in real life?”
Ouch, I felt that one. Now I feel compelled to self-analyze.
Thinking about it, if I were able to talk about everything to someone, I would probably blog a bit less. There is a component of blogging for me that's like “shouting into the void”, where I just kind of say things on my mind, and it probably wasn't a coincidence that I started blogging more during quarantine.
On the other hand, I don't really think that's the entire point. Looking at blogging purely that way is a bit similar to “lol, aren't diaries just substitutes for human interaction” and “lol, wasn't Henry David Thoreau just writing because he got angsty in the woods”, which just sounds a bit silly. Writing arises out of a varied list motivations and instincts, a lot of which are either intuitive to the writer or become obvious after some thinking. For me, it didn't end up taking that long to realize that I'll always end up doing some form of blogging, both for writing and for the fun and the comfort of designing one.
Not to misrepresent my friend's question, though. It's a good one to ask regardless, and has been surprisingly useful in thinking about my reasons for blogging.
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