I Blog, Therefore I Am

On the one month anniversary of this blog, here is the explanation for its existence.

I started it a month ago. I have not mentioned it to anyone. I did reference it on my Facebook home page, replacing the "Book Recommendation of the Day." I don't actually use Facebook; I have a page, and I accept friend requests, but that is about it. There is no reason to assume that anyone would ever look at my Facebook page. I thought about simply starting the blog and not linking it to anything, but the I figured it might be interesting to see if anyone would find it through Facebook. Some people have found it; I have been averaging about 10 visits a day (with a low of 1 and a high of 49). I have no idea if that is one person visiting 10 times a day or ten people visiting every day or lots of people who have visited only once.

The spread of blogging has interested me. It is an oddly egocentric act to blog--not only is one posting one's thoughts in a public forum, but there is the implied assumption that somebody would actually want to read those thoughts. Why does anyone assume that others want to read their thoughts? Now obviously people do read blogs, so the egocentrism of blogging is not necessarily delusional. But, what prompts a person to decide that his thoughts are worth posting for the world to read? I don't think anyone has ever said to me, "You should really start a blog because I want to read what you think."

In some ways a blog is simply an online diary. I have never kept a diary. In some ways a blog is a forum to talk to others. My whole job involves talking to others, so I hardly need a new forum to do that. Some blogs are forums to post behind-the-scenes information. I have no such information. Some blogs are devoted to gathering interesting tidbits from the world at large. I don't spend enough time browsing the web to have blog like that--in fact, my principal source of news is the Wall Street Journal from the day before (I get in in the mail and read it with breakfast the following morning--as a result, if something happens on a Tuesday, I learn about it on Thursday morning).

So, why did I start this blog? Honestly, I am not sure; I was mostly just curious what the experience would be like. When I was last in India, our family kept a blog so that people back home would know that we were still alive and all, but that blog ended as soon as we returned to the US. This time it seems very different.

So far, I have enjoyed it. I can grouse about life and write about the books I have read. The blog, in other words, is terribly self-indulgent. Then again, I didn't really expect anyone to read the thing. When I started it, I figured I would try it for a month and decide whether it was worth the bother. I think it is.

I do hope that if I ever mention the blog to anyone, I'll have enough shame to end the whole experiment. I don't mind talking to anyone who has stumbled upon this blog about it or the content therein, but I shudder at the idea of telling anyone about it who was blessed by not knowing about it. I really do hate the idea of anyone feeling some compulsion to actually read it--as long as it is the Reader's own fault for reading this blog, I don't feel terribly guilty for the lack of anything of universal interest in the content of these musings.