Why am I doing this blog? It is a lot of work, especially for a slow and somewhat deliberate writer like myself. Isn’t it taking away time from getting something else done? Well, I happened to see You should blog even if you have no readers on a techie blog and I thought it described some of the reasons I started blogging, and that it made the subject worthy of a post.

Nathan’s main points are that it makes you a better reader when you’ve been writing more and that it makes you smarter by making you focus on your thoughts. Go read his blog for the details. That’s not all the benefits that I personally get.

Blogging keeps me from wasting time doing other things on the Internet. I gave up TV a long time ago, but can still try to relax looking at stupid fails and silly cats. It doesn’t help as much as blogging. It takes a lot of energy to blog. When its the end of the day and I’m tired, but I have some pictures to upload and write about the energy spent pays returns in uplifting my spirit. It doesn’t matter whether someone reads it so much as someone could read it. Someone could be inspired to do that little bit more in their yard, garden or life to be more resilient.

Blogging also puts my ideas out there for feedback. Maybe someone will read it and have an idea to do something better than I have. I am always eager to learn better ways of doing things, and it is only through dialog that I’ll learn about them.

Blogging also captures my failed experiments. This also goes under making you smarter. When you blog about something you’re trying and you fail, you are going to learn more from that failure by blogging about it. And you are going to blog about it because of that one reader who might have thought that was a neat idea too.

So I am going to keep blogging, even if my Mother again says “Oh, I forgot about your blog.”