March 27, 2014 - Why all the fuss?

This blog does not have many regular readers.  Most posts get 5-8 hits quickly after I post them.  Some, like my musings on Romans, get twice that much traffic.  But that's about it.  My intended audience is not wide, and the blog is not a commercial endeavor.  I don't intend to ever add advertising to it, or change its scope or content to get more readers.

So, asks one reader, why do I bother?  Who do I do it for?

A good question, and something I pondered as I started writing.  First and foremost, the blog is selfish.  I understand myself and my surroundings better if I write about them.  And I'm terrible at journal-writing in general.  I had a couple really good years when I was younger (under 25), but not much since then.  Having the blog public and knowing that it is one source of family news for my parents motivates me a bit more to write in it.

Secondly, the blog is for my family.  It serves a few purposes in this regard.  Because my family is several thousand miles away from the rest of our relatives (except my brother) and Facebook is not a good vehicle for prose, a blog makes good sense to provide some context and story to go along with the FB posts and pictures.  So that's the real-time angle.  It also provides a journal-like history of the world (I try to put in some topical references now and again to place thoughts in context) and my family's wanderings in it.  At some point, I'll export this blog into a desktop publishing program and print some copies of it and bind them.  And then it will be a book of my life - a stream of consciousness autobiography.  And though I'll never be famous, perhaps my kids or grandkids will find something useful in here.  I suppose I should add my handful of regular readers into this section as well.  Some of them stumbled upon the blog, some I told about it, and those who find something valuable in it come back for more.  I feel sorry for you, gentle readers, that you have nothing better to do with your time.  And I am thankful you come back to read more anyway.  For these dear people, the blog is an obvious way to be step out of my normal introversion and express myself in ways that I don't often to outside of my immediate family.  I am terribly unmotivated to seek friendships outside of my family.  Not because I don't like people, but because I have always had a VERY small number of VERY close friends.  And now I live with 5 of my best friends, which is about as wide of a circle of friends as I've ever had.  I suppose that as the kids grow up and move out that my adult friend circle will increase.  Time will tell.

Thirdly, the blog is for whomever may stumble upon it.  My life focus is broad - work, family, church, politics, music, camping, fitness - and my blog reflects the eclectic nature of my life.  I am hopeful that some things I write may be useful to someone else.  I don't know who those people might be (the internet is miraculous that way), but maybe I can be of service in just an ancillary way to someone I'll never meet.

A couple quick updates on various fronts - I was asked to take a quick trip for business reasons, and it's been a bit of an eye-opener.  Not surprising so much, but a very good opportunity to learn.  I've done a long run each week (9 miles or more) for the last 4 weeks.  I challenge myself each time, of course.  Today's run was 9 miles of road running, and I was happy to see a 9:24 average pace per mile when I was done.  Not as fast as I would have liked, but the knees felt okay, and I wasn't stumbling at the end.  Good stuff.  I'm up to 9 chin ups in an upper body session now, along with 30 pushups and some chest presses and some other stuff.  The upper body stuff is coming, and with luck I'll be able to complete the Tough Mudder, every obstacle.  That's my goal.  Frankly, I may skip the final electrical one this time.  I did it already, I have nothing to prove.  I finished Words of Radiance.  It is as awe-inspiring as I hoped it would be.  I am a little worried that Brandon Sanderson will go all Orson Scott Card in the series and spend a lot of book time on expository about the magic systems, etc.  I really don't care why there's Stormlight in one world and Allomancy on another and superhero powers on another.  And I'd prefer to keep them separate.  Card, at the end of the Ender series spends most of a book trying to explain his notion of god in that universe.  He does the same with the Oversoul in a different series.  Hoping I don't see that from this author.

And now I'm tired - time to read for a few minutes before I sleep off today's run.  I have an upper body workout to do before I hit the office at 8:30 tomorrow morning.