The Purpose of Blogging

When I started this blog, I had high hopes of having regular posts that would form various series of topics (like my attempt on peacemaking). With the end of school, posting became a burden, with one more thing to do to try and write a coherent post that would be brilliant, insightful, and inspirational.

I thought the purpose of a blog was to make a major difference in the world. But is that really the purpose? I saw a t-shirt on a website recently that said, "More people have read this shirt than your blog." I laughed out loud when I read that. And believe it or not, I didn't really care that that was true in my case. I don't know if anyone reads this.

Which gets to my question of what is the purpose of blogging, at least for me. My goal here has been to get people to think and get into dialogue about difficult topics. That doesn't mean I have to have the answers or even insightful comments. That just puts performance pressure on me.

That's one of my biggest struggles: Performance and perfectionism. I read this interview with the director of WALL•E, in which he discusses how with Toy Story, they attempted to please the Disney execs. And the project was almost cancelled. The Pixar people then went back and made the movie they wanted. The result was the smash success we all know.

It's amazing what happens when we listen to hearts versus our heads of what to do next. Whenever I have caught myself in this struggle and moved toward listening more to my heart, I've been told I make much more of an impact on people.

So that's my goal here. I'm going to try to stop performing and just post whatever is on my mind and heart, even if it's not in a well-thought-out series of brilliant insights. Maybe it'll get someone to think. And if no one else reads it, at least it's helped me to think and process my own thoughts and struggles...

As an adjunct to this, I've included a new box on my blog that has other articles and blog that I have "shared." I may comment, I may not, but they're things that I think are interesting, often to get people to think. And feel. I hope... :)