The Reasons for It All

If you think about it, blogging is a bit of a weird hobby. And yet thousands of people do it. Every day thousands of people (like me) open up their thoughts, ideas, lives, hobbies, and all manner of other aspects of their lives to the World Wide Web for people to read and comment upon. But why? Why do we do it? I recently opened up a discussion/survey on the wonderful 20sb site to find out, and came up with some pretty interesting results.

Some people blog to write about a hobby, or a challenge, like weight loss, to share with others their experiences and ideas. Some blog to document their travels, to let their friends and family at home know about what they’ve been up to. A few more people said they blogged because they liked to make people laugh, and about the same number said it was a form of personal diary, simply to document their lives so they could look back on it. The next most popular answers were from people who blogged because they are writers, and they like having a place to write that isn’t inside a novel, and from people who believe that they have important things to say and want to share their thoughts with other people. But the most popular response? People who blog as an outlet. As a place to empty their heads of the thoughts that fill them every day. To help cope with the troubles and challenges of life. An outlet.

A large number of people, apparently, find blogging incredibly therapeutic. But why is that? Why do we find the idea of sharing our innermost thoughts and troubles with the world so calming? In my opinion, there are a few reasons:

When you blog, you do not have to actively share it with anyone. A blog can be completely anonymous. A place for you to let off that steam, get rid of those thoughts, and not affect anyone else along the way. But a blog is also a place that others can stumble across. I think that inside everyone there is a little part of them wanting someone to come across their blog, to think “I know what that’s like”, and to share in the experience. The idea that someone, somewhere in the world, will start to care about what goes on in your own little world. Pretty therapeutic, I can see. 

Blogging is where the power of the written word, the power of the internet, and the power of humanity all come together to provide the ultimate chance of obtaining complete anonymity, or indeed near-fame. You don’t get that chance anywhere else.

As for me, I started to blog as, well, a revision aid, with the thought that if I could write down all my thoughts about things for my exams, I could look back at them and hopefully learn something, whilst maybe helping a few other people along the way. Then came procrastination: something I could do to take my mind off of those same exams for a while. After that, well, I decided to share not only aspects of my fairly average life, but also my thoughts on a few other things I thought were important, as well as review some things I went to see, in case anyone else was interested. So I suppose I’m somewhat of an amalgamation of some of the things I’ve said above. As for the future, I suppose I’ll continue to write down anything in my head that I want to write down, and try to keep giving all you wonderful people an insight into my little world.