Sat 8 Nov 2008
A friend got me thinking about why I blog.
So I thought back to when I started to blog, in August of 2003. My first posting was a short writing about modesty. If I rewound a few weeks from there, I was sitting in a church listening to Izzy Lyman that came to speak on homechooling - in a cute outfit that included pants and boots. And she blogged.
I remember that I barely knew what a blog was, at that time. And little while after I met Mrs. Lyman, of the late (wah!) The Homeschool Revolution blog, and found out what blogging was, I decided to keep a blog.
I’ve always liked to write and I realized if I published things online, people could see them. I had my own website up, but nothing like a blog. It got updated every year, if that. (It’s still online, believe it or not, and the last substantial update was probably in 04). So I decided to make a blog and it become a hobby or sorts, something I’d do for fun at the end of the day. Oftentimes I’d have a thought or two in my head and I would expound on them and end up much more sure of where I stood on the thought or question when I was done - maybe it’s a form of therapy or something 
Like having a conversation with myself.
It’s been a mix of personal news, summation of things I’ve learned, random rants and raves, and a few lectures thrown in.
Sometimes I’ve complained because hit counter has gone down, but when I stop to think about the 20 hits a day I do get, I’m pleasantly surprised that so many people come every day. I think it has slowed due to the move to a new site and the fact that I no longer visit (and leave comments) at as many blogs as I used to.
I enjoy reading my old posts more than I did living them sometimes, just as childhood memories can be sweeter than living felt at the time. I’m not sure what that means - if I have sugar coated what life was like or if I’m just forgetting details.
This post in itself is a perfect example of what happens to me when I sit down to blog - say a little bit in a lot of words 
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One thing I noticed is that I never used to be afraid of writing too much. I’ve looked at old posts of mine that are in a wider format and much longer in length than anything I post here.
How do you feel about long posts?
What does it take to get you to stay long enough to read the whole thing?
Which makes more of a difference; the reputation in your eyes of the author, or the interest you find in the first few lines? Sometimes I will sit to read a long post and find the beginning rather uninteresting or hard to focus on but because I’ve read material from the author before and liked it, I’ll stick in and read the rest just to see if my initial impression wasn’t wrong. Or other times I will just assume because it’s a long, hard read, there must be something good for me in there
Posted by Bonnie under Uncategorized
November 8th, 2008 at 9:22 pm
I believe your blog is like a journal. You keep it for yourself as much as for others. It is good to know there is something useful going on in your head. When you write it down in a blog or journal it’s like a window into your head. You hope that other people like what they see but above all you hope that you like what you see. If you don’t like it you can always change it.
November 9th, 2008 at 2:43 am
“… just as childhood memories can be sweeter than living felt at the time.” Ah.
And — what does it take to get me to read through blog entries? The mind behind it. Yours, for example, I read all the way through every time.
November 9th, 2008 at 9:41 pm
If it’s a new blog, than I look for something interesting within the first few thoughts.
If it’s someone I know, I tend to read every entry whether it’s initially interesting or not. I usually come away with some food for though regardless of how it was written.