Why start a blog?
The obvious reason is to become a better writer. After writing one hundred blog posts you will be a better writer, but that that’s not the reason to do it.
The other obvious reason is to get readers. You think you’re important, you think you have something to say, you want to broadcast to people. That may be a tempting reason for some to give it a go. It may be a turn-off for others, ensuring they never try. But whichever way you look at it, getting readers is not the point anyway.
Like so many things, the real reason is under the surface. You have to go back a few steps, to the origin, to understand it.
Before you get a reader and before you get a page of writing, you have to have an idea. Ideas are insights, observations and connections. And if you want to have or make any of those, first you have to see something. This means you have to start noticing more.
You start to notice when things stand out. Instead of being busy all the time, now you’re observing all the time. You notice the things that happen all the time and the things that hardly happen at all. This is common and that is curious. This is missing and that is amazing. How does this work? And why do we do that?
And after you’ve done some noticing, then you make up your mind. You have to decide that this thing you’ve noticed is worth talking about and give a reason why so you can frame it and share it: this is what I saw, and this is what I think.
After that, the words are good. You can keep getting better at those. And the readers are nice. Hopefully you get some of those.
But the real benefit to this is how it changes the way you see and how you assert your ideas. Casual observations are no longer formless puffs of smoke that you let disappear as soon as they emerge. Now everything you see can become something. Especially, if you’re on the hook to publish every day, then some of these puffs have to become something, or at least one of them does. So what did you see today? What did you learn? What do you think? What will you share?
Now you’re building a habit. A habit of seeing the world and forming a view.
After some time, you’ll have a body of work that captures your thinking which is generously given away for others to see. It may not change them, but that’s not the point, because the real benefit is that it will change you.
