755 and Counting

This is my 755th blog post, not counting ones here. Or here. In multiple places in the blogosphere over the last year, I have heard blogging called the ultimate exercise in ego. Thinking anyone wants to hear you blather on.

So as I started to post today, I wondered . . . why DO I blog?

First and foremost, it's to settle my brain down in the morning. I am sure there are writers of every different kind of brain pattern and madness. My own brain works at warp speed 24/7. The way Oldest Son thinks of prime numbers before he goes to sleep to calm his brain down and settle in for sleep, I pray at night. But even that doesn't work all the time. I struggle with insomnia--not falling asleep but STAYING asleep, and when I wake up at 3:00 a.m., it's nearly always with either worry . . . or story . . . in my head. By dawn, when I get up, my brain is already so revved up I need to get rid of the junk in my head so I can start the day calmly. So I pray again . . . meditate . . . and blog. Then I grab coffee and am off to the races at my computer.

This is an internal dialogue I have with myself. I don't prepare my blogs. I don't even think about them before I sit down. I don't write them the night before and edit them (hence the typos sometimes). This is just my head at dawn. I sometimes think it doesn't matter if YOU are even here.

EXCEPT . . . that I have always been a kid who loved mail. All my life. I would wait for the mailman with anticipation. It was only when I got to be an adult . . . and realized the mailman mostly brought bills that I stopped liking mail. When I was younger, my grandmother was nearly deaf and she had a speech impediment and didn't like talking on the phone. She couldn't hear anyway. So when I went off to college, the ONLY way I could keep in touch with her until she died when I was 30, was face to face--or mail. Since I went to school 8 hours away, mail it was--sometimes every single day . . . often two or three times a week. I loved writing her from my classes; my professors thought I was taking notes, but I was telling her all about college--an experience she never had. She would write back about her senior citizens center and what adventures they were having taking the bus to the Poconos. Her letters would arrive and . . . I got mail! To me, a blog is like mail. When I have comments, it's fun to read them . . .

And along the way, I made friends. I also have lurkers. I also have a lot of people who email me at my website but won't post here. One once said it was because the people who post are all so brainy. Speaking for myself . . . nah. Not so much. So you can comment. But yes, along the way, some of the recurring names have become real friends that I email or even talk to on the telephone. I've even gotten a call from Germany.

And in the end . . . it's also about my craft. This weird thing I do. This writing thing. This word-sickness I can't cure myself of.

So why do you blog? Why do you visit? Do you like mail?