The Fascination of Blogging

We are going to start out with a disclaimer here. This is a personal opinion piece. There is nothing scientific and there are no facts to back up anything I put into words here. It is just me being me. Have fun with that. Blogging, what fun, but some people take it quite seriously and I would hate to upset the boat, don't you know?

It seems everyone has a blog these days; Business' have blogs, Stay At Home Moms have blogs, the rogue teenagers have blogs, even the dissatisfied worker has a blog. I guess a better question would be who doesn't have a blog. Well my Dad doesn't, but he has moved up to selling on EBay so I guess it is starting.

So what brings us to this fascination of keeping a blog? I can understand business jumping on the band wagon. What a great way to advertise. I must admit, I keep my blog on Myspace and I have Pink as a friend and read their blog. For those of you who don't know Pink is Victoria's Secret. I mean come on, what a better way to make your advertising dollar go farther? People will subscribe to the RSS feed and you have their attention anytime you want to put up a blog or send out advertisements.

But what is it about the average Joe's fascination with putting all their "secrets" down on the internet. The all about me pages, the I did this today, and so on and so forth? Well I keep a blog, I have for years. I have to admit, that some days it is just down right boring, but once in awhile I come up with a good entry or two. Now I am a writer and that is my excuse. What of the rest of the world?

If you are female, then you probably remember having a diary. You know the one with the lock that we had to keep hidden away from little brothers who would spend hours trying to locate our diaries and then spend countless time trying to pick the lock so we would never know they had read it until they wanted to do the most damage. You can tell I have some pretty sneaky brothers can't you? I had one. Admission time, I still have a diary. So it has progressed and I now call it my art journal, but yes I still jot down ideas, thoughts and things that I don't want the general public to view. But this is different; my journal is a private thing. What I am curious about here, is public blogs. The blogs that have all the "good" stuff included in their many entries.

My theory is this, and as I said in the very first paragraph, it is simply that, my theory, we want to be connected to others and blogging is the in way to do it at the moment. We as humans have the need to socialize and be around others. In today's society the computer has replaced a great number of social activities for a lot of people think about it. I am a very real example. I work from home on my computer. I don't go out to work every day with other people. I don't meet people at the water cooler to share my latest gossip with. For me, my blog is it. I think that for many this is it. They long to have that connection with others. Even people who go to work every day and have the fascination with blogging. They are reaching out to others. A blog seems like a perfectly harmless way to get what you think out into the great big world. To share with lots of people your accomplishments and thoughts and what you do in your day to day life. The act of blogging shows you that you are not in reality alone. All you have to do is start to "blog hop" and you will see there are thousands if not millions of people out there doing the same thing. They are blogging, hoping to reach out to others.

There are blog groups. Groups of people who have meet only through their blogging. See this works for them. They have formed a network, a circle of friends. They are sharing with people with like interest and going on in their lives. I guess it may be better than meeting in a bar. In reality it is just another way of having some sort of human contact if it is only through the internet and computer. We are still connecting with our thoughts, words and minds.

So if you are a blogger, like me. And find it is a fascination, keep up with it. Reach out; find people you share like interests with. Expand your horizon; find people who have new and varied interest than you. It is a fascination. It may die some day in the future. It may be replaced by something newer some day, but in the here and now, it is the way to go, and I personally am fascinated by all the great blogs out there.