Why blog? (a meme)

Got this at Dewey's (not her real name, but one of my regular reads just the same).

1. Do you promote your blog? Yeah I ping a bunch of places through blogflux when I think of it, but I don't go crazy. Mostly I just write, visit others, and make long obnoxious comments and hope that'll do the trick.

2. How often do you check hits? I check once or twice a day when I'm near a computer but I'm not obsessesive.

3. Do you stick to one topic? No, it's not in my personality, speaking of personality have you tried this cheese? And that reminds me of this book about cheese.

4. Who knows that you have a blog? Everyone I know.

5. How many blogs do you read? There are about 40 I try to at least look at every day, and then there are those I end up at through unplanned clicking.

6. Are you a fast reader? Yes, but never fast enough Not as fast as superfastreader - that's for sure.

7. Do you customise your blog or do anything technical? I just play around with the Html in an amateurish kind of way, but I don't have the time or the knowledge to do anything fancy.

8. Do you blog anonymously? I use my own first name but I don't use anyone else's unless they're already public to the blogging community. My family and friends are all referred to obliquely or with a nickname.

9. To what extent do you censor yourself? Not too much. I don't go out of my way to be nasty or incendiary because one of my chief reasons for blogging is connecting with others, and there are certain topics I have decided to steer clear of on my blog, but I don't think sharing an opinion is valuable if it's not really your own opinion, but your filtering of that opinion after worrying about what everyone or someone else will think. My other chief reason for blogging is to write and I don't think writing has value - either as a process for the writer or as an experience for the reader - if it is not flowing from your impulse center. At least that's the writing I like to read and so that is the writing I try to do. Especially as I think of blogging as a quick and dirty format. There are plenty of media where more formality is appropriate, but here I'm just laying it quickly out on the line for others to connect with if they will. I don't imagine for a minute that everyone will like me or what I have to say. I guess those that do will stick around and the rest won't.

10. The best thing about blogging? Writing every day and connecting with others (not always similar others) around ideas - not geographical location, not "office" politics, not shared past - but what we read and what we think. My circle has not only become bigger, it's become more broad - I know people from more varied backgrounds, place, and ages than before, and I know them by what they think - not what they look like or where they live.

Most mornings what I'm going to write gets me out of bed with energy. I read more attentively because somewhere in my head I'm thinking about what I might write. And I have way more varied and numerous ideas for what to read next that I ever had before (thanks!).