The other day, somebody asked me why I bother blogging. “It seems like an awful lot of work for little or no reward,” he said. “So why do it?”
He was assuming I have a choice!
Catharsis
For me, writing is primarily cathartic. I always have lots of ideas bouncing around my head, and I need some way to get them out before they drive me crazy. Right now, blogging is proving to be an excellent outlet, with some added side benefits.
Multi-disciplined fun
I’ve always loved to write, I enjoy designing and building web sites, and I like having my own platform for publishing some of my thoughts and opinions. Running my own blog lets me have fun with all these things at the same time.
Personal branding
I’m not sure about the term ‘personal branding’. It makes some of the things we do seem cold and calculated when they’re really not.
However, I admit there is a strong personal branding element to blogging. Hopefully mine will help people interested in hiring me find out a little more about me. Ideally it will also help me to keep in touch with people I’ve worked with in the past, letting them see what I’m up to, and what I’m thinking about.
Learning
I sometimes blog about things I’d like to know more about, as part of a learning process. Writing about something forces you to fact-find and organise your thoughts – and as my teachers always used to say: there’s nothing like getting something down ‘on paper’ if you want to commit it to memory.
Notebook
As my content builds up, I’m hoping it will start to serve me as a digital notebook I can access at any time, from just about anywhere. This will be particularly useful for recalling ideas I might be able to use on future projects.
> 140 chars
Last but not least, I tweet more than I blog, but sometimes I need more than 140 characters!
