Why Do I Blog?

When people find out that I blog and have read it a bit, I get 1 of 3 questions:

1. When do you find the time?
Honestly, it doesn't take that much time. I do type quickly but I reckon I spend less than 15 minutes/day

2. How do you think of things to blog about?
Anything and everything. If it's in my head, it will probably end up on my blog. If you run out of things to talk about, blogging is probably not for you. Quite frankly, I could hold a conversation with a cardboard box (and have!). Now some of you may say, yeah, well this is just as interesting as holding a conversation with a cardboard box (Daddy H). I've got one thing to say: Next Blog. No one forces anyone to come to the blog. You might land here accidentally but no one makes you stay.

3. Why do you do it?
Someone once told me that they couldn't blog because their life wasn't as exciting as mine. Are you kidding me? My life of laundry and school runs and working til I drop is not exactly a cliff hanger. And some people don't find it interesting. They can read something else.

No, I blog to fulfill a deep seated desire to capture my life for the generations that come after me. I don't really know my parents as people. I wish I did. I remember when I moved in with my grandmother when I was in university. During our Saturday nights together, I got to know her as a woman with dreams lost and dreams realised, with heartbreaks and belly laughs. I stopped looking up at her on the pillar on which I had I placed her and started looking her in the eye and into her heart so I could see what lay behind the woman who I loved so much.

When I my children are grown, I want them to know their life as it was happening. My husband has a poor memory. He can't remember that I asked him to clear the garage 5 times in the last month. (Or he chooses not to?) I mean, this man has so few memories of his childhood we can count them on our hands. And there's no detail in the memories he does have. Tragedy.

Blogging is also cathartic. I work things out as I write them down much the same way people work things out as they talk them through. Writing gives me the option of editing my thoughts.

Strange things do happen when you blog. I read an introduction to my book review over on Time.com written by a woman I have never met. We've exchanged emails on a couple of occasions but nothing at length to speak of. I read her blog. She reads mine. she didn't "interview" me for the intro. And yet she described me better than many people I've known for years could. That was a bit unsettling. Not that Lisa knows me. But that there are people out there who don't know me who know me so well. And I may not know them.

But I believe they mean me no harm and near as I can figure, the advantages out weight the disadvantage. I'm going with that! And it gives me something to do at 5 am as the rest of the world sleeps.