Why I Blog

It started as a challenge, more specifically the WriteandRun31 Challenge started by Matt Frazier and Christine Frazier.

The idea behind the challenge was to write and run every day for the month of January. Since I have often thought about starting a blog, I thought I would give this a shot.

Once January ended I decided to keep on blogging, and now all of a sudden it’s March 8, making this my 67th straight day of blogging. While I am proud of the streak, I realize that compared to some other blogs it’s small potatoes.

Seth Godin has been blogging almost every day since January 2002. His first blog post was about how bored he was shopping that day, except for the Apple store he visited (how prophetic!).

Fred Wilson has posted to his blog every day since September 23, 2003. His first blog post provided some background on himself and his venture into blogging.

David Kanigan has been posting nearly every day since October 2011. His first blog post was a take on the classic “Hello, world”,  which by tradition is  often used to illustrate to beginners the most basic syntax of a programming language.

The reason for linking to each of their first blog posts is to show that they all had to begin somewhere. And then by the simple act (well some days it’s not so simple, at least for me) of posting something every day, several years later they have created an impressive body of work, developed an engaged group of readers, improved their writing, and shared their thoughts with the world.

I read their blogs every day, finding their posts informative, entertaining, and inspirational.

I realize I am not even close to their blogging productivity and success, but that’s no reason to not blog, to not share my voice with the world. As Fred Wilson pointed out in his first post, he had no idea if he would do it every day or rarely, but 11 years later it’s obvious which path he chose.

So my hope is that I am on that same path, that 10 years from now I will be able to look back at my first blog post and be proud of how far I’ve come, proud of having persisted in completing the simple act of having posted something every day. At least I hope it gets a little simpler by then.

And as to why I blog, I can’t say it any better than Seth:

“Well, I think the most important thing to understand about blogging is that if you are blogging for other people you are going to be disappointed. Even if no one would read it I would still blog. And the people I know who blog passionately, all of them say exactly the same thing. So that is the way you have to look at it, you can’t say: “I’m not getting enough comments I’m not going to blog. I’m not getting enough money, I’m not going to blog.” You have to say: “this is a great chance for me to clear my thoughts and put them into the world, what an opportunity.”