Rambling: Neurons and Cheerleaders

I started this blog with fine intentions, posted a few times, then dropped it on the floor. And it's not because I ran out of black and white pictures of cats. I think I have the same disease that I complain about: The focus on moneymaking in blogging. I'm focused on it in the negative, ranting and gnashing about people who blog for the hope of a payday. I have plenty to say about that, but on this blog I don't want to rant about payday blogging, I want to ignore it.

So I'm making a resolution: I'll post here at least once a month. Even at the risk of sounding silly. Even at the risk of veering wildly off topic. And this time, I'm going to post about resolutions. Well, sort of.

The New Year's resolution posts rolled around this month, making me think of the way that people use their blogs to support their goals--whims, and hobbies, and self improvement, and crazy ideas.

I think that blogs serve this purpose particularly well. Forums do, too, but forums seem to have the most value when a number of people are offering their separate views on a subject. A blog is a reversal of this--it allows a single person to give their own thoughts center stage, viewed in sequence without interruption. They can tell their audience all about wearing the same dress for a year. (The Little Brown Dress Project, sadly offline.) Cooking every recipe from The Art of French Cooking. (You know that one.) Reading a hundred books in a year. (All sorts of people.) Breaking a habit. Recovering from a toxic parent. Learning to cook. Restoring a house. Grieving a death. They can have continued thoughts and inside jokes, and the context is right there in the blog.

Scientists and studies and, well, all sorts of people, say that simply writing about an experience can be therapeutic, that it changes our response to stress at a neurological level. Of course, you can put feelings into words by journaling privately, without ever exposing those words to others. But I believe, based on no evidence other than my own experience, that it's different when others will read that writing. Words are for communication, after all; are they really the same thing when you know that no one but yourself will ever receive that communication? Aren't your thoughts sharper, your phrases clearer, when you really do have to transfer your thoughts to another person?

All of this is just about the outgoing communication, but of course there's also the response. The value of getting support from groups, from Weight Watchers to grief support groups to book clubs and quilting bees, is well known. A blog offers the possibility of supporters, cheerleaders, and fellow enthusiasts or sufferers. That community thing. I think that the gentle pressure of an audience can push a person to make progress when they might otherwise abandon a goal.

As I re-read the above, there's a strong flavor of stating the obvious. It feels rather like those blog posts that assure the reader that "Eggs are a useful food," or "Weeding is important to a garden." I seem to have said, "Blogs are good for sharing your thoughts." Well, duh.

But, so be it; time to poke writer's block in the eye and post.

Hey, writer's block. Now, that could be a post...

Image: Wikimedia Commons.