Why blog?

Last I counted, there are about a zillion and four blogs out there.

Wait... there's three more!

And another!

Sigh. I can't keep up.

Glance around the blogosphere, and it makes you start to think. Why bother throwing your voice out into such a vast, over-saturated sea of virtual humanity? Why try?

Especially when you're just another average 20 or 30-something mom, wife, Christian, crafter, writer, baker. There are so many others just like me, who seem to have it all figured out. I can easily get jealous of them for their engagement with readers -- look, she had 12 comments on her post! -- or simply because they have a killer voice, one that just sings through the screen and socks me right in the heart.

You start to question yourself, like what am I adding to the picture here? What makes me think anyone gives a flying you-know-what about what I have to say or what my life is like?

That's a great point, really. 

I can accept that no one cares, and that's because despite all this junk I'm talking, I know that it's all OK. Whatever. It's OK. I am OK that I don't get comments or traffic (which really, I don't know how to track, but I assume). I don't have a "button." Or a giveaway corner. Or a sponsorship deal. I don't go to blogging conferences. I Twitter, but only a tad. I comment on other blogs, but only because I really feel like it. I don't belong to little blogging circles. I don't really know how to market my blog or to make myself into a "personal brand" or how to attract attention, really, of any kind. I am a blogging-101 flunkee, basically.

There's a tiny part of my brain that believes all of that matters, that I need some sort of validation to keep writing here. The part of me that asks, "If no one is reading, who are you writing for, and why do you care?"

The bigger part of my brain has the answer that satisfies me. I write for me. I blog for me. I do it because it's nice to have a space to let some of the junk out of my mind, to release it and to attempt to do so in a creative, or at least cohesive, way. I also do so because I truly love having a record of my days, something to look back on, that will help me remember. My memory is flimsy at best, so that matters.

I have to be OK -- and like I said, I mostly am -- with that. With writing for me. With ignoring the rest of the blogging world and what it says I need to do to be successful. My philsosophy is going to be that I'll do only things I want to, because they make me happy, and that that alone is a form of success worth striving toward.

So that's why I had to write this post:: to get these thoughts out where I can see them. Because it helps me. It reminds me of what I believe, and why I'm here. That's why I blog.