Why Do You Blog?

Last night Frances Garrood asked Why do you blog?  Interesting question.  4½ years ago I wrote the following at Sucked Into Blogland.

I started A Hebridean in New Zealand towards the end of 2007.  My Brother had been blogging for a while and it seemed to me that it was a way of telling my friends and family back in Scotland and England and France and Spain what I was up to in the other half of my life.  It was somewhere between a diary and a supplement to the emails that I sent (and still send).  It is also lovely to look back and be reminded of what I have done and where I have been. 

When I returned to Lewis at the end of April 2008 I continued my diary in Eagleton Notes.  That way my friends in New Zealand could see what I was doing when I was back in Europe. 

Before Andrew (our elder son) died on my birthday in June 2006 he had kept a blog of his long and arduous battle against cancer.  I re-read it some while later and started another blog A Life in the Day Of.  OK silly title but as I used the pseudonym L'Homme Bizarre avec la Barbe Grise why shouldn't it have been a silly title.  I've not kept it up but at some stage my cancer will become a nuisance again and I shall no doubt resort to it as my blanket. 

Perhaps a month or so ago I wandered into a few of the blogs that Scriptor Senex follows on his Rambles.  I found a life out there which was absolutely fascinating and compelling.  I have only visited a small (ish) number of blogs but have discovered a few that I visit every day (almost).  Given that my life was filled before from 0630 to about 0100 (I have never needed much sleep) I now have a real dilemma.  How do I fit my new found acquaintances into my life? 

What really puzzles me, however, is how one can suddenly become so attached to people one has never met and is unlikely ever to meet.  I have become acquainted with someone with one of the most beautiful smiles and sunny outlooks on life; someone whose brain and ability with words (and, obviously other things too) blows me away; someone from 'my' Island in Scotland whom I've never met on the Island (so far as I know); someone from the North of New Zealand who has met recent tragedy with apparent great fortitude and whom I have come to admire; and someone with a bright pink (is it pink?) blog which is full of the most interesting things (which I am working my way through backwards as I've only just come to it).

It is highly unlikely that in non cyber-space life we would live lives that would ever cross.  We may live in different continents and cultures.  We may come from different backgrounds.  We may be from different age brackets.  We may hold diametrically opposing views on certain things (but we may never know).  But we all have a common interest in what each of us has to say. 

Thank you Scriptor Senex for introducing me to an entirely new life.

If I were writing that today I could add new friends and some of the above have gone and some have both come and gone but apart from that I don't think I would alter many words.