why do you blog?

I, the infrequent blogger have blogged for a long while now. Albiet, unreliably but still I blog. I am also a reader of blogs. I like reading a large variety of blogs on my large variety fo interests. Most of them centering around food, fitness, finance (yess, i am interested in finance and what i’d do with money if i ever had any) and even random funny blogs. 

The question that popped up in my mind today after reading this post on “Every Gym’s Nightmare”, was that why do you blog? What motivates food bloggers to put up every morsel of food, what makes you want to post feelings or desires or random rants and ramblings or maybe even be like me, without a coherent theme. This blog is obviously no money maker for me. I do struggle with my weight, my relationships and have the same ups and downs as everyone else and sometimes I like to air ’em out. Most people know I do this thing here and hopefully very few of them actually follow it (sends up a short prayer on that one).

Blogs however, have become such a strong way of community building. People who enjoy food find other foodies. Mostly though they find lurkers like me who just like to experiment in the quiet of their kitchen and barely ever actually discuss it. Some find a sense of community in the fact that they are not the only ones going through a particular trauma or experience or lifestage or whachmacallit. Some find a fan following and much riches off their blogs, yet others find accountability by reporting what they eat or workout. In this increasingly isolated world sometimes it seems so much easier to find like minded people in the online world than to actually go about it the hard way, by slowly finding them one after another, sometimes simultaneously. But what to do when your interests are too diverse? I love working out and like to stick to a reasonable diet. I also love running, but I am also a reader who can stayed glued to a book for as much time as it takes to find out what happened. I love gardening, but dont have enough space to call mine a garden. I dont have much advice to give and nothing very spectacular done which says, here do this and ye shalt be happy.  I dont do much opnionating here, i have strong opinions on things which i prefer sharing personally in a conversation rather than on a loudspeaker. However mild I may be, I have gotten into trouble with this blog and therefore I hesistate before I write. Yet, I do, to think things through sometimes, to document events sometimes and mostly to just share and to keep in touch with folks I dont see or hear much from anymore.

Why do we read ’em blogs then? I like to know that others struggle too. I find that overly cheerful blogs put me off, as do overly sad ones. There has to be a bit of balance. Everyone has bad days but everyone has happy days too. I like some food for thought, some new thought process, something that sparks the creativity in the kitchen and outside.  I like knowing that there are others out there who think about food pretty much 24/7 as I do. I love peeking into their lives and seeing what different folk make of the same set of ingredients provided to them by life. Yet I dislike the hero status they get awarded and become celebrities and lose some of their former passion and become mouthpieces. I hate it when their real life gets in the way and they get stung by the presence of a blog.  I like the feeling that I know them, their thoughts and in the case of food bloggers, what they eat (which is an ever consuming passion of mine). So deceptive isnt it? You think you know a person so much more just because of their fb status updates or from their blogs but still you know only what they choose to put out there, as chandu recently iterated on her blog, you see but a sliver of their life, dont draw conclusions based on that. Take what is good and leave the rest. But the question remains why do you blog? or read blogs in general? or this one in specific?