I often receive expressions of surprise from people I know well or work closely with when they find out that I blog. I don’t talk about it much which may be the part that surprises people the most. They seem to think that if you write, why not get the biggest audience you can?
For me, it’s simple calculus. I write primarily for myself. This forum is a place where I can practice expressing my ideas. Putting a thought down in words pretty quickly helps you understand if there are basic flaws in your argument. It’s very hard to write a few paragraphs about a poorly conceived concept.
There are plenty of posts that I have where the ideas could be more clearly stated or more fleshed out more completely. I don’t write pages in a post because once I finish the thought running around in my head, there’s no immediate need to finish it. My favorite writers are the ones who leave big questions unanswered and expect their readers to be mature enough to fill in the blank themselves. Grey areas in life are the sweetest.
Anyone I talk to that even slightly expresses an interest in writing or blogging, I encourage them to do it. The only requirement is that you be willing to put your thoughts into word. You don’t need an audience of hundreds, thousands or millions to be successful. You simply need to feel you have gotten some value out of it. There’s no requirement to write daily or weekly or even quarterly if you don’t want to put that on yourself.
Expression matters.