Why I Write

A question I have to ask myself sometimes is why I write if I know no one is reading my work. And that’s a valid question, I think. The answer is actually pretty simple: I write for myself. I write to clarify my thinking. I write with the notion that something I write might find its way to a reader who needs the information or perspective I’m providing. I write to document my thinking at this moment in time, knowing that at some future date my thinking will evolve in new directions, just as my current thinking evolved from, and in some cases diverged from, my earlier thinking. I write because I want to and, to some extent, need to.

It’s kind of odd when I stop to think about it. Writing takes time and it takes effort. Usually – and I think this is true for most people – anything that takes time and effort will, over time, fall to the wayside as other interests and activities demand time and attention. So far, though, this has not happened with this writing. Today marks the twentieth daily entry (weekends excluded) and I continue to write. In fact, I look forward to the time I set aside for writing and to the effort of thinking through what I want to say and how I want to say it.

Why I blog#

At the beginning of his video, NetworkChuck talks about his reasons for creating a blog. He wants people to recognize that there is more to him than simply being a “tech Youtuber”. He has hobbies, dreams, plans, and interests that run far afield of his technical content. He is a person a whole person with all that that entails. I’m not a tech Youtuber, but I am a person. And I, too, have interests, dreams, goals, plans, and hobbies that encompass a number of disparate fields. Take a stroll through my posts and you’ll see what I mean.

Like Chuck, I want to provide my unique perspective on various topics. You may not agree with what I say. That’s okay. I prefer it that way because we grow as people when we at least consider the viewpoint of others. We don’t have to agree with them, but we do at least need to acknowledge that there are alternative perspectives to our own. We do need to give consideration to other’s ideas to see how they both align with and differ from our own. I think that’s a large part of the problems the US is facing right now: Everyone thinks they’re right and everyone else is wrong and they’re unwilling to consider something from a different perspective. The reality is that in most situations not only does the truth lie somewhere in the middle of those various perspectives but when we really sit down and start thinking about things we begin to realize that our wants, interests, desires, and values usually diverge on only a few points. That is, we agree on more than we disagree, but we allow our disagreements to overshadow our common ground.

I think I said this in an earlier post, but sometimes what I write isn’t necessarily what I think personally. Rather, I’m writing to stimulate thought. I may be taking an alternate view than the one I hold to help me examine and understand it better. This is something everyone should do. Many people do this in the form of private journals. I do it publicly. At least, most of the time.

In a way, too, blogging allows me to leave a legacy of my thoughts. Most academics leave a legacy of research. I don’t particularly care to do research¹. But I do want to dig into topics and learn what I can about them. Being ADHD, that sometimes means I don’t dig deeply beneath the surface while at other times I can go quite deeply into a topic. Most of that doesn’t make onto these pages simply because the amount of writing needed to thoroughly document that type of learning is simply too great. I’m lazy. I like getting the basic ideas down so that my recall is triggered when I re-read stuff. And, yes, I do periodically re-read what I’ve written here. And that’s another reason I blog: To give me an easy way to review and reconsider my thinking. Do I still agree with what I wrote five years ago? Maybe. If not, I’ll do an update post.

So, at the end of the day, I am writing for myself. And, if someone else stumbles across my words and finds them useful, that’s great. If they stumble across my words and are moved to disagree, that’s okay, too. At least so long as they’re taking the time to _consider_what I wrote rather than simply dismissing it out of hand because they disagree.