Blogging for the Love of It

I've been blogging long enough to have seen a number of blogs come and go. Most of the blogs that I was reading when I first began this blog have vanished, gone dormant, moved to another blogging platform, got their own domain names, or gone in a direction I wasn't interested in. I've seen some blogs start out with a lot of promise, with new posts several times a week on all sorts of intriguing topics, only to fade away weeks or months later. I've seen bloggers quit after years of writing, only to show up in another place under another name. And I've seen other blogs begin and persist, perhaps never becoming wildly successful, but maintaining a steady practice of good, solid writing.

Blogging is a lot of work, something that most aspiring bloggers probably don't entirely realize. You have to keep writing, week after week, month after month. After a while, your initial ideas start to dry up but you have to keep going. Or quit. I don't know what the average lifespan of a blog is, but I bet it is not long. Many of the best blogs that I read today have been around for years. These bloggers have figured out what they need to do to produce solid, consistent work, and they do it. But not everyone has the patience to put in the effort to learn that. Once the initial impetus to write and to blog is gone, many simply fade away again into the aether, perhaps limiting themselves once again to tweets and Facebook updates.

Blogging doesn't offer many immediate, tangible rewards. Most blogs remain relatively small. Commenters, followers, and readers come and go. Many posts that you pour your heart and soul into the writing of receive no comments at all and few pageviews, while other posts that seemed inferior to you inexplicably become popular. Most of us don't get paid to blog. Most of us don't become famous by keeping a blog. When you get right down to it, your blog is just one tiny, obscure corner of the vast Internet universe, completely unnoticed by nearly all Internet users.

Why blog? It's a question I've been asking myself lately. I hope to one day build a career as a writer and lately I've been wondering why it is that I'm here. Each blog post requires a not inconsiderable amount of time and effort to write. After it is published, it receives a few comments (sometimes), and a few dozen to a few hundred people may read it, and then it's gone. Into the aether. Is it really worth the effort I put into it? Is this what I should be spending my time and energy on, or should I be focusing my efforts on other forms of writing that one day I may actually be paid to write?

There's really only one possible reason for why I would blog: for the love of it.

I think back to when I began this blog. I began it simply for the heck of it, to see if I could do it. I'd first discovered blogs not long before that, and became fascinated with them as a writing form. I didn't have any delusions about it. I didn't know if anyone would even read my blog. I didn't really care. I just wanted to give it a try. So I did. It was fun. I wrote a new post every few days. I didn't think about it much. I wrote when I had a few minutes to spare, in between classes and studying for exams and doing homework. I didn't plan my posts out ahead of time. I didn't write first and second drafts. I just took a few minutes to write a few paragraphs, check them over for any obvious spelling or grammatical errors, and then publish them.

But things changed. A few people actually started to read my blog. My posts got longer. I thought about them more. I worried about them. I wanted to make each one sound good. I wanted to make each blog post that post: you know, the one that would define my beliefs, the one that would transform the world, the one that would capture people's hearts and minds.

Currently, the single post that has received the most pageviews here is not even my writing at all. It's a poem by a Canadian author that I posted a couple years ago for Imbolc. Apparently, my blog must be one of the few online sources for that poem.

Although keeping this blog has both improved my writing, and, even more importantly, allowed me to become more confident when writing for an audience, my joy in writing it has decreased. I've allowed myself to become too obsessed with comments and followers and pageviews, as though the number of those that I have is somehow a measure of my success, as though it doesn't really matter what I write, as long as people like what I write. But what do I really want? Do I want my writing to be liked, or do I want my writing to be powerful, moving, unsettling, and transforming? Do I want my writing to be popular, or do I want my writing to be respected? Do I want to write a lot, or do I want to write well? What is it that I truly value? What is it that will keep me writing, that will keep me in love with writing, just for the heck of it?

I know what it is. It's not the numbers. It's not the number of comments, or the number of pageviews, or the number of times my post is shared on Facebook or Google+. It's the quality of the comments. It's knowing that someone, somewhere, is reading my words and being touched by them. It's the joy of crafting sentences and paragraphs and allowing my deepest thoughts and feelings to be translated into words. It's the quality, not the quantity. It's so obvious, really, so easy.

I'm just too good at making things way more difficult than they really are.

I don't want to write posts just so they'll be popular. I don't want to be constrained by feeling that I have to write about spirituality, or about nature, or about Druidry, or about anything else. I want to write for love, not for statistics. I want my blog to reflect who I am, with all my eccentricities and uncertainties and strange senses of humour. I have a feeling that things are going to change here, although I'm not yet sure how. I don't know where things are going these days. Changes are happening, but they're all below the surface still.

What does all this mean for you, the reader? At this point, probably not much. I still plan to write regularly, as I have been doing. As I recover my earlier love for blogging, the kinds of posts that I am drawn to write may change. I may write more. I may write less. It is likely that you will not notice any immediate changes at all. But things are changing, although I do not yet know what they're changing into. Wish me luck.

Like what you read?  Please visit my new blog: At the Edge of the Ordinary.