Why I blog

I will have been writing this blog for two years this month and I thought it might be worth explaining why I do it.

After thinking about it, there are many different reasons. Here they are:

– I live on my own. I moved in just over two years ago and it is probably no coincidence I started up the blog shortly after. After house sharing for around 8 or 9 years, I no longer have someone around all the time to discuss things with. On top of this, I have no-one to keep my occupied when I am bored. There are literally dozens of people in the internet to interact with.

– User-driven content is my favourite part of the internet. It is much more personal and I find it much more interesting. I enjoy reading other peoples blogs – I have now linked to some of my favourite ones which I recommend you check out if you have time – and I hope that other people will enjoy mine in a similar way.

– I am hilarious and this is my gift to the world.

– Sometimes ideas will get stuck in my head and I will need to get them out in order to stop thinking about them. You know like when you get that annoying song stuck in your head and the only way to get it out is to sing it? Sometimes I have that with thoughts.

– This can happen when I get angry and I need to vent.

– On top of this, it helps to have the end goal of writing about something in order to help me worth through my thoughts in a hopefully coherent and logical manner.

– It’d be nice to think that sometimes I make others do the same.

– I am a vegetarian. I get asked fairly regularly why I am and sometimes it can be a bit frustrating to have to explain again why I am. I thought if I wrote why, I might get asked less.

– I am also an accountant. It’s not a particularly creative job and since my band split up, I have fewer and fewer creative outlets. I think I am a frustrated writer stuck spending my day dealing with numbers.

– I like to try to share the stuff that I love with other people in an attempt to make them fall in love with and appreciate the things I enjoy as well.

– I often find other people’s blogs inspiring. The reason I went on my road trip around England to see all the places that I’d wanted to see when I was little but never got a chance to was after reading about a friend who had wanted to visit St Paul’s Cathedral since they were little and finally managed to do so around 20 years later. I hope that I might occasionally inspire others.

– If I have a goal of blogging about something I intend to do then it will force me to do so. Once I’d started my Evolution of Pro Evolution project on the Unbelievable Jeff website, I felt like I had to continue with it through to completion. This is the reason I’ve made my bucket list public, so that people – and by people I mean mainly Natalie – will keep asking me how I’m getting on with it. In Natalie’s case, so that she can point out how much better she is doing at her bucket list.

– Blogging about my life will make it easier for biography writers to more accurately portray my life in years to come.

– It will also help me to remember what I’ve done and how I felt in years to come. It’s the text equivalent of a photo album. I’m very good at forgetting things and writing this blog has at times helped me to remember things that I’ve already done.

– In writing a blog, I can make my life seem much more interesting than it really is.

So, for a large number of all the reasons above, I would still write even if no-one ever reads but I would like to hope that people do.