Why am I Doing This?

A former coworker, good friend, and fellow blogger has thrown in the towel on blogging. Honestly I was surprised. I always enjoyed reading his insightful posts. He did have a number of good points in his sign-off blog post. Like my blog, his following wasn’t huge. He felt that he knew most, if not all of his readers – and he could just converse with them via e-mail. Additionally, blogging takes a lot of energy and time. I’ll be the first to admit that when my life gets busy my blog gets forgotten. That sure doesn’t help with readership, but anyway, it happens.

This made me think long and hard about my blog as well. Why am I doing this? When I was in an executive position I thought it would be great thought leadership. When I was unemployed, I thought it would be a great way for potential employers to get to know me and my work ethic. It also gave me something to do that allowed me to express myself and my creativity. Now I’m working for a big, very stable, privately held software company. I’m not in a role that is outward facing, nor am I in an executive position. So why?

I think I’ve come to the conclusion that I do this more for me that for anyone else. I’ve always enjoyed writing. Practicing writing makes it easier. I believe that the longer that I blog, the better I become at expressing my thoughts. I’ve always wanted to write a book. Maybe someday I will, but for now I am a little afraid of the time commitment. Blogging is way easier than planning an entire book. One blog post is about one page. That’s doable on a semi-regular basis. I guess for now I will keep on blogging – well, at least until it isn’t doing anything for me anymore.