Why blog? Thoughts on Seeker's 6th Birthday

6 today! That's the age of Seeker blog. Should I celebrate? Or not? Well, to keep going for 6 years is an achievement, so I'll give myself a pat on the back. 

I am pre-scheduling this post for 2 May 2015 as I expect to have other things on my mind on this day. (I may tell you about that next week.) The ability to schedule when a post is published is one of the more useful skills acquired in the blog learning process. If you have seen any of my posts published at 6.00 am there is no need to admire my early rising abilities. I probably wrote it the day before - or even a week before and scheduled it to publish automatically at my chosen time and date.

I had no idea what I was doing or why I was doing it when I started this personal blog 6 years ago today. I think the main conscious motivation was wanting to learn how - I really do like learning new skills - and I enjoy writing. The unconscious motivation was (and is) far more complex - and none of your business. Yes, I am a rather private person and also think it important to guard the privacy of family and friends. I will let you into one secret though. Some of my posts may reflect my childhood self, climbing on rocks on a beach or swinging high on a swing and calling out 'look at me' to any adults I wanted to notice me. Yes, a few people do notice this blog, but I would probably still write it even if no-one did.

Mostly I use the blog to sort out my thoughts on something I'm thinking about or want to remember. Not in an essay-writing way - I like to keep posts short and accessible, but generally not as short as my 1st post 'The Blog Begins' which was 77 words long and had no image. I did not expect anyone except me to read that post - I wanted to lurk around in the blogosphere until I'd learnt a bit more about how things worked here. I did the same when I first signed up to Twitter. The fact that 2 people commented encouraged me to do some more posts. Now blogging has become a habit, sometimes regular and frequent, sometimes sporadic and occasional.

One of the satisfactions of writing a blog post is that it is so much easier to complete than more complicated tasks - lik writing the book I might get round to one day, or not. A post is as simple or as complicated as you want to make it of course. I like to keep it simple and usually short. Life is too short to spend too much time on a blog.

If you blog, why do you do it? What keeps you going?

Image Credit: Pixaby, Public domain