Why We Blog, part 2

Back in January, my first post - like everyone else's - outlined some expectations for the blog. Join me in the wayback machine as I evaluate my progres...

I wrote:
"The plan for this blog is for a wide breadth of posts [I'll say "check"]. Some will, of course, be about bike racing [definitely check], but I'll try to limit those [sure, why not... check] . Others will cover experiments that I wish I could run [not so much anymore, but check], observations about everyday stuff [check], and perhaps some making fun of Mark [check plus] "


So, on the surface, I seem to have met my goals. Clearly I neglected to warn you that I'd be writing about my Karaoke-related exploits on a weekly basis, but this staple in my life has become a staple of the blog. Cycling has been somewhat pervasive, but who're we kidding? If anything, I've been pretty good about keeping a lid on it! Regrettably few posts have been about kittycats.

This process of review has inspired a meta-blog of sorts, an exploration of what it is that keeps me blogging.

I like to write. So sue me, I like to occasionally get the creative juices flowing. My research pretty much locks me into the concrete and pragmatic, and it's nice to escape once a day. This blog is the Title IX in my Left-vs-Right Brain battle.

I am awesome, and you need to realize that. If you were as awesome as I am, you would want to share that awesomeness with everyone. Short of taking my one-man play, entitled "NinjaDon is Totally Sweet; A Play in 3 Acts", on a nation-wide tour (which would never work, logistically speaking), this blog is the best way to spread the wealth. I guess what I'm saying is that it feels good to have people read what you've created, and why not do what feels good?

I am forgetful. A few years ago, when my grandfather wrote his memoirs, I immediately decided that my life thus far had been boring, too boring for memoirs. While I'm still not planning on writing memoirs, I'm realizing more and more that interesting things have happened to me... I've just forgotten about them. This blog has helped with that. For example, the story of the UVM urine, the karaoke world championships, and of course everything that happened in Mexico are all pretty good stories that get lost in the grand scheme, like "there was a race at Rutgers", "I used to go to Karaoke", or "I went to Mexico". (NB: each of the words in the Mexico clause are different links). The blog is like a diary, only it's not a "here's what I did today", it's a "here's what 24 year old Don does, thinks, and believes" in short chapters. It's Encyclopaedia Dontannica.

Going back to that first post, notice that I mentioned that I'd tested the waters of blogging by writing Notes in Facebook. I wrote, "It would seem that my ramblings were palatable to most of the people who read them, or at least that nobody was so bored or offended as to complain to me." So far, I think I've maintained that level of excellence, and I daresay that I've got the skillz to stay here in the hypernetoblogospherotubes for a little while longer.