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Why I Blog (Part 1)
Reasons why I blog.
- Life is short - I mean really short. One day you're driving your first car and the next day you're looking at retirement plans. Take a look around you -- see all of those cemeteries? They're all filled with people who kept thinking life would go on forever. It didn't.
- I've got things to say - I'd like to give advice to my great-great-grandchildren, but heck if I'll ever meet them. This way, I can rant and lecture and bore the heck out of my entire family line -- perhaps thousands of people -- from way back here in the past. It's like being a granddad forever. Except no presents. I am still working on the presents issue.
- It gives me perspective - After you write a couple hundred stories on things you are interested in, fairly soon you realize that things have a natural pattern. New cure for cancer in an article online? Well gee, take a look back over twenty years. There have been articles like that about every other month for that entire period. This one will probably fizzle like the others.
- I have CRS - Unfortunately, I suffer from CRS, or Can't Remember Stuff. I believe I live somewhere in Virginia and have a family of 6, but this is mainly because of what my driver's license says and all of those people who keep calling me on the phone. As a very forgetful person, it occurs to me that most of my life is just slipping away a day at a time. Last year? I guess if I thought about it I could remember a few things that happened. But gosh, I'm sure that were dozens of important things that happened that are just ----- gone. A blog gives me a place to stick stuff for later.
- One day the singularity cometh - It's true. One day machine intelligence will rise up and become one with mankind. The lucky people alive at that time will probably become immortal. What about the rest of us? Well, I'm guessing if you had a lot of recorded output in your life (such as a blog) the Great Machine in the Sky will be able to construct a facsimile of you -- something like a rough fax of a fax, except it's a person. So perhaps these blog entries can form the basis of Artificial Daniel 1.0 or something like that! I only hope he has better jokes. : )
- Beats spamming all of my friends - I find a lot of stuff online. In fact, I am somewhat of an online junkie, although I am currently in remission. I used to spam all of my friends every day or so. Now when I come across something important to me that I want to keep, I just post it here. Then I spam everyone with links to my blog. See how much different that is?
- Its great practice for professional writing - I used to freelance write when I was younger. I wrote about 100 articles for the local weekly, a dozen or two articles for the local daily, and around 10-15 articles for national magazines. My biggest score? An interview with horror author Clive Barker during his peak for the men's magazine High Society. No, neither Clive or I had to pose for this article.
Any time you write regularly, even when it's bash-and-publish like this, it helps structure your thoughts and polish your thinking skills. Writing is not only fun, like winning the lottery, it's a discipline, like playing the piano. Practicing your ability to communicate is a good thing, no?
Write on, sweetie! This is one of my favorite posts you have done!