The Point of the Blog

I’ve always stated that this blog is a purely selfish endeavour, that it is intended to provide me catharsis and clarity of thought, and serves no further purpose. There is clearly more to the story than this however, otherwise I’d be scribbling in my journal rather than publishing everything to internet, where the whole world might read what I write. When I first started writing, it was largely under the assumption that nobody would ever read it, and that I may as well have deleted the posts rather than publish them. Since then, of course things have changed, I’ve slowly become aware that various people at least know of the blogs existence, some of whom will influence my writing - for example my parents or my ex-girlfriend - and now there’s a tiny, but non-zero, number of people who will read almost every post. The whole point of the short-form blog originally was that it would add an element of accountability to my thoughts and my life, and that has been heightened since being fairly sure at least one person I know and respect will read it. Yes, that means I may write slightly differently than if this were my journal, but I don’t think that’s a bad thing - the primary result of this is that I usually like to be more sure of my own ideas before I write about them, to have given them the time and attention they deserve before I am willing to put my name next to them. Frankly, I think a great many people could benefit from that particular exercise.

Anyway. Perhaps the purpose of the blog is slowly changing, by forcing me to more rigorously audit my own ideas, and the motivation to write higher quality posts will hopefully translate to the formulation of higher quality opinions and hypotheses. With that being said, I am a little lost with regards to long form posts, as I presently have a handful of half written drafts on various topics. I enjoy writing longer pieces and would love to produce these essay style posts on a more frequent basis, but the self doubt inevitably seems to creep in that what I am saying is boring, self-aggrandising or simply erroneous.

Of course, I should probably stop being such a pussy and just write anyway. Even if the blog is slowly becoming a little for other people, it’s still got my name on it.