Why we blog...

A couple months ago, I had a conversation with one of the students who works for my department, and who reads this blog. He had commented that he prefered my personal posts to my political posts because he thought the writing was funnier and he didn't really care about the politics.

I was kind of surprised, because I've always thought of myself as a political blogger first, and as political blogging as being more serious than personal blogging. After all, the best known bloggers, like Instapundit, are known for their political writing. Political posts are usually tougher to write - they involve checking links and facts and deep thinking about political and legal issues, while personal posts are just a matter of typing stuff that happened to me in the day. I'm not really convininced anyone wants to hear what I did all day - I don't exactly live the gangsta life. Shit, I usually get bored thinking about myself.

Then again, there are bloggers who are good enough writers that they make the most boring of things sound interesting. Let's face it, a big chunk of Lileks's writings are of the "I woke up, played with the kid, went to target, and came home and made a sandwich" type, yet I still read him every day, because he's a great writer and somehow manages to make me care what he bought at Target on a random Tuesday. Then again, I'm no James Lileks.

Another thing that's made me think about blogging is the comment on this post about Baltimore politics. It wasn't a brilliant post, but I thought it was relevant, and it was a small national news story at the time. Anyone who has ever left a comment on a blog knows that starting a comment with "I don't know anything about (subject)" and calling the author stupid probably doesn't have much to say. But the funniest part of the comment was the ending that "got it as the mayor saying that he should be focusing on more important things, like you should if you want to have a blogger worth [reading]".

Kind of funny to say that a post on a blog that has conversations from my job needs to focus on more important things than a post about a statement by an urban mayor about national policy. But it also raises the question of why I blog.

I like when people read my stuff and link to it. I wish more of my hits on this blog were from links or regular vistors, rather than people getting blog in their search results on google for such topics as "pimped out cars" and "hairy armpits". But part of the reason I blog is for the same reason I kept a diary as a kid - it lets me think, and forces me to put my feelings and experiences into words and text. There are a handful of coworkers and friends who I know check this blog, and I'm glad for that, but writing it has become such a habit that I would probably keep writing even if I knew nobody was reading it.