Why Blog?

As you can tell on the right hand side, I haven't updated this in over a year, since my Grandmother passed away.   Why should one blog?   I never have figured out the answer to this question.   Is this a journal for myself?   I don't think I'm quite ready to put that up for everyone to read (though it does exist).   The comments about murdering people in their sleep (ok that doesn't exist) or whatever else don't seem quite worthy of public distribution.   But I don't delude myself that anyone actually reads this place, so what is this for?  

Twitter takes care of the need to share interesting thoughts and links with folks, without the time sink of writing a post (or, god forbid, an essay).   Short form, 140 chars, is severely. restrictive, and if you want to convey meaning in 140 chars, you have a challenge.   However

Why blog? Tweet instead or write in a moleskine with a lock.  But don't stop writing.

 seems to pretty accurately capture any meaning worth extracting from this post.   So why am I writing it?   It's fun.   I have a little time now, since the DOE review is over, and my life is coming back to normal.  I'm at home for the holidays and I had to play with Blogger for other reasons.    Probably seven other reasons.   It's like doodling, but with your mind.   And thinking about a prospective reader, which I don't when I write in my journal, focuses the mind a little, while allowing yourself freeform text makes the thoughts flow a bit more freely.

So, maybe for the new year I'll try to update this place once a month or so, which, of course, isn't any serious effort, but represents an apparent factor of 12 increase over prior efforts!