Why Blog? Here's Why.

Lawn ornaments, Zick style. You know, skulls, scattered bones, busted watering cans. Everything's better with BlueBirdies on it. I'm pretty sure my reader demographic knows the Blue Bonnet Margarine jingle. I still sing it on the rare occasions that I buy margarine. And I buy Blue Bonnet, because everything's better...

It's a THING, as John Acorn likes to say. I'm still sitting back, slack-jawed, at the response. Breaking 60 comments on one post? Can't be happening here. That's for the Big Fish, the hyper-connected bloggers with dendrites snaking into every corner of the Net. Or so I thought. Being honest about the self-indulgent and frankly egotistical side of my blogging smoked out a lot of people who wanted to chime in. Mostly, you were being kind, and trying to make me feel better about what boils down to a completely insignificant (and probably imagined) slight. But many of you were intrigued, I think, that I'd drop my virtual pants and admit that I'm a craven feedback hog at heart. And what about you? If we're honest about it, why else would we post our thoughts and pictures? Why not just write it all in a locked journal and throw away the key? Certainly, hearing feedback from appreciative people isn't my entire motivation for blogging, but it's a powerful one.

Why write, if you aren't trying to please your readers by doing so? I don't care if you're writing gorgeous poetry or hateful spew---you can't tell me you don't care what people think of it. If you make the effort to post it, you've demonstrated that you care. By posting it, you're hoping to reach a reading audience; otherwise, you wouldn't put it out there. And I'd submit that you're hoping that audience likes it. Thoreau, for all his indifference to social convention, hoped somebody would treasure the scribbled product of his hermetic lock-in at Walden Pond. Audubon gloried in painting birds beautifully, and was crushed when critics attacked the animated poses of his birds. Sid Vicious peered out through slitted eyes, gauging the reaction to his snarls in the mosh pit. Though I know little of him personally, I can assure you that Rush Limbaugh hopes his audience likes the particular brand of llama-gob he belches up.

Aside from blatant ego-stoking, I use blogging as an illustrated, archived record of my life that, as it grows, is becoming, if I may say so, flippin' OSSUM to look back on. Diving into the archive instantly transports me back to forgotten events and feelings, both good and heartbreaking. I used to keep a document, running to hundreds of pages, called "Nature Notes." Every day, I'd update it with arrival and departure dates of migrating birds, who's singing, what wildflowers are in bloom, the first toad trill of spring, that kind of thing. I knew I'd experience these astounding things and just as quickly forget they ever happened if I didn't write them down.

When I started blogging, I gave up my Nature Notes. Every time I mourn its demise, I slap myself and say, "Zick. You are archiving the most bodacious nature notebook anybody ever saw!" I've substituted the jottings of a few minutes a day with over an hour of careful journaling, complete with a photographic archive. Would I ever organize my thoughts and photos like this if I didn't have an audience I was trying to please? I'll answer that with another question. Will I ever take the time to fill those baby scrapbooks in the closet with birth announcements, photos, locks of first-haircut hair, and taped-on teeth? Snowball's chance. Maybe if somebody kneecaps me. The time to do that has come and gone.

I have you to thank for getting me to clean up my journaling act, to learn to work with a decent camera, to stretch my brain and heart to produce something I'm proud of, five days a week, two years running. I can't think of anything else I've done that faithfully, except eat.
It takes soft mud to give you deer dewclaws.

Writers have to write. It's how they process the world, chew it into chunks they can swallow and digest. If writers cease to write, are they still writers? Blogging, though it's often disparaged as hasty and careless jotting, just another way we "dumb ourselves down," needn't be any of that. A blog is as good as you decide to make it.

I use blogging as a proving ground for essays and ideas, as a cooker for themes in my writing. The intense reader response to a post about the hunting of sandhill cranes spawned two chapters in the book I'm writing--essays I have been trying to squeeze out for almost a decade, essays I never thought I could put into words, much less a book. Suddenly, they were necessary--not pretty or lyrical, but essential. It took a community of nature lovers and, interestingly enough, hunters to show me how to write them. Everyone who reads this blog loves birds, deer, and bunnies, but not quite in the same way. I'm glad for that, too.Some of you are thinking, How beautiful! Some are thinking, Perfect lungshot! You're all welcome here. Please check your guns at the door.

Blogging makes me live larger. Blogging makes me want to experience new things for more than just a momentary thrill. Just as seeing a new bird is more fun with a friend by your side, life is more fun to experience when you go at it with the intention of interpreting it, presenting it to friends. I'm a whole lot more likely to say yes to any diversion, any curious experience, than I was before I started blogging.

If you want to have an interesting blog, it helps to lead an interesting--and interested-- life. Asking people questions about themselves flings doors open to a big, bright and insanely fascinating world. How did Charles Kurault keep coming up with his gentle, moving stories about obscure but remarkable people? How does Ira Glass keep producing This American Life, a show so riveting that, should my kids interrupt while I'm listening, makes me wave my hands around in the air, pleading for silence? Reporters like Kurault and Glass ask people questions about themselves, and the rest follows. In blogging, I pretend I'm working for a small magazine that gives me complete creative freedom, sending me on any assignment I wish. Small detail: Cash flow's not so good. I haven't seen a paycheck in two and a half years. I haven't quite figured out how to approach the boss, but I'm pretty sure she likes my work.

So it's a two-way street, and I get just as much as I give, in the warm glow of your approval and the sparks of your ideas. I have no idea where this train is headed, but I'm hanging on, grinning like a raggedy hobo, as the scenery whips by. Thank you for the virtual cards and letters, the bunches and bunches of roses you have laid here at my door.