I am a regular reader of Wangjianshuo’s blog and a link on his most recent post lead me to a video of a presentation by Mena Trott, “the 28-year-old founder of leading blog software company Six Apart“. It was really interesting to hear her energetic talk about why we write blogs.
So of course that got me thinking about why I write this blog and why I read other people’s blogs.
The reason I write this blog is pretty simple and you see it on the top right of my page. “A window into what I’m doing…mostly for Mom and Dad.” This blog is precisely that – a tool to connect me more to my family and friends who in most cases live a long, long way away. Through this blog they can find out about things as “exciting” as what I eat for dinner to what I think of internal audits. Once in a while I throw in a picture so they can even see where I’ve been recently.
Blogs can help people to connect. I was able to catch up with a few friends, some of whose blogs are listed on the sidebar to this page, by finding their blogs through web searches. We still don’t keep in touch directly enough, but still I now have a way (when the Chinese firewall doesn’t get in my way) to check up on them and somehow feel like I am staying connected. Because I haved lived a long time overseas and moved around a fair bit, I think these little connections to people I have crossed paths with at some point in the past keep me in touch with my history and help me to keep up those relationships that might have otherwise faded.
And then I thought why do I read other people’s blogs, especially people I don’t know at all. And I think this is basically related to why I read a lot more non-fiction books than fiction books. The reason is basically that reality is pretty damn interesting and the reality of what other people’s lives, even those I have never met or probably will ever meet, can be really interesting. The variety of events going in the world, the variety of interpretations of these events, the good and the bad of events in the daily lives of people and what they think of those things is usually far more interesting to me than most best selling novels. When I had access to Blogger I would randomly goes through a lot of other people’s blogs and, while a lot of them had no interest to me, once in a while I would find something really fascinating or maybe even something beautiful or moving.
And finally blogs can just be practically helpful. I also read the China Law Blog a lot. Being relatively new to China and working in a role where I have to consider compliance and various legal issues everyday, a blog like this can sometimes be useful as a source of information on developments going on here or lead me to resources about related topics I want to know more about. Because blogs are so easy and low-cost (in many cases free) to setup, it allows a lot of very experienced persons to set up a site on something they know a lot about and provide helpful information to a niche audience.
The internet is really changing our world a lot. Blogs and even Podcasts are great way for a lot of people to share their stories and their experiences with a worldwide audience. I hope this helps me to stay connected and helps me to learn more.