Why Do I Blog?

This is the first of my NaBloWriMo posts.  In case you aren't in the loop, we NaBoWriMoers are writing a post every day for the entire month of October.  There's still time to join us if you want to shoot me an email at nothannah@comsouth.net.


Blogging is commonplace nowadays.  When I first started, back in 2005, it wasn't as commonplace.  There were a few "stars" already (Dooce springs to mind...), but for the most part, it was a fairly new medium.  My reasons for blogging then are not what they are now, mainly because I'M not what I was then.  Or who.  Whatever.

Let's do this in list form:

Heather's Reasons for Blogging

1. I wanted to become a rich and famous writer.  By blogging.  I know, I know...that has happened to precisely one blogger as far as I know.  BUT  I had a dream way back in 2005 that somehow, blogging would project me into the world of interviews with Oprah and book deals and maybe that 1954 black Mustang convertible with red leather seats I've coveted for decades.  Uh.  Not so much.  Of course, in the first year I was a blogger, I think I wrote sixty-two entries.  Sixty.  Two.  Not a good way to become a celebrity blogger, in case you were wondering.
2. I wanted to vent about Aspergers.  Jeffrey was diagnosed in September of 2006, several months after I started.  It was...difficult.  I felt pretty isolated in Dingleberry and even, to an extent, isolated by my friemily because to put it bluntly, very few folks understood or accepted the diagnosis then.  (I don't blame them, I harbor no grudges, everybody's awesome...moving on.)  I NEEDED a place to complain and worry and blather and be afraid and this was the place.  I blathered, y'all.  OH, how I blathered.  The blathering was extensive.   In the back of my mind, I imagined a little community of Aspie moms coming together and taking over the world.  This didn't happen.  But I did make it through those awful first years of interventions and meds and meltdowns and fears and tears because of the space I'm Not Hannah gave me to vent.
3. I wanted to have friends.  Oh, my Filing Cabinet, that sounds pitiful.  But it's true.  Dingleberry has not been a hotbed of social activity for me and while it's getting better (mainly because I'm sucking it up and joining society even though I stand out like a sore thumb), it has been lonely for many years for me.  Blogging gives me a whole social network at my fingertips, and by "social network," I mean friends.  I've shared pregnancies, deaths, drunken ramblings, financial worries, literary triumphs, new jobs, lost jobs--everything you share with "real life" friends--with my blogging buddies.  Many of them I connected with via NaBloWriMo.  And I love them.  I'm not kidding.  I used to feel kind of dumb about saying it, but I've been friends with these women (and a few men) for YEARS now, and I love them.   Luff.  Love them.  There have been times in my life, to be honest, when everything else was falling off the rails and just reading their stuff or writing something silly here on I'm Not Hannah has been the only thing that keeps me chugging along.  You know who you are.  I've mentioned you before.  And when I say "I luff you," I mean it in the real, deep, "you are my friend" way.  I mean, I'm not trying to get all serious in the pre-dawn hours, but you folks are important to me and if I ever get the chance to hug your necks, I will probably stand in the coffee shop clinging to you like a starfish and sobbing all over you.  That really makes you want to hug me, doesn't it?  I don't know how I'll arrange this meeting, but if we can ever find a way to make a place the middle point between Washington and Australia and Michigan and Nebraska and India and Oklahoma and West Virginia and Wisconsin and New Jersey and Georgia and Alabama and about eleventy-million other places, let's do it.  I promise I won't cling to you for more than, like, an hour.  Tops.
4. I want to be a better writer. THIS is the truth now.  This is why I still write, in fits and bursts and random tirades.  I've realized that there are two types of writing I really love:  fiction and blogging.  A few years back, I would have said "creative nonfiction," and I guess that's still true.  I mean, it takes some creativity to name this town Dingleberry, y'all.  In any case, I know that blogging will never make me rich and famous, but I don't need it to do that any more.  I've found a new career path that is bringing me both a paycheck AND a creative outlet and so now, the pressure is off as far as making writing that thing I do to have money.  Does that make any sense?  The years of trying to find freelance work when I really just want to write a book about a teenage pirate chick or a screenplay about a nutty family at Christmas feel over and now I'm free to write what I want to write when I want to write it.  
1. At the same time (helllllooo, weird Blogger formatting...pretend this is a new paragraph, y'all), I am very aware that I want to make sure I'm turning out good work for my readers.  It's weird that at the same time I don't care about monetizing my blog, I'm also moving toward a regimented writing schedule and topics and whathaveyou and considering a Facebook page for readers.  I don't really understand how these things are coming together in my head this way, but I'm just going to go with it.  I blame it on being a Gemini.  We're weird, y'all.

In a nutshell, I blog because blogging lets me be me.  It lets me write, it lets me make friends, it lets me vent my frustrations and fears.  It connects me with the world.  It allows me to show off my mad photography and design skilz.

It lets me be ME.  What does blogging do for you?  Why, my lovies, do you blog?