If You Build it They Will Come

Diary (Photo credit: benleto)

Daily Prompt:  Personal Space.  To what extent is your blog a place for your own self-expression and creativity vs. a site designed to attract readers? How do you balance that? If sticking to certain topics and types of posts meant your readership would triple, would you do it?

This blog has always been a hundred percent self-expression (because aren’t all bloggers by definition raging egomaniacs?) with a bit of creativity thrown in.  The only readers I expected to attract were family members and close friends and maybe one or two morbid curiosity seekers after my death.  You know, if anyone happened to be looking for eulogy material.  I have no idea who those people might be and it’s possible they don’t exist.

I have been writing all my life.  Stories, poems, notes on cards, letters, diaries, journals, lists. I have also been reading everything that’s readable for as long as I can remember. The greatest lesson I’ve learned from both of these activities is that a person never ever stops learning.

With a head chock full of information (useless or not) and in danger of exploding, I find writing down my own scrambled version of things helps to relieve the pressure.  So really and truly, the bottom line is,  I do this for myself.  If I sound like a pompous lecturing ass, it’s just me talking to myself, trying to convince myself, whipping myself into shape, trying to become a better person, stay relatively sane, and ultimately not bore myself to tears.

In order to never run out of things to say (like I need help with that) I do things like this daily prompt challenge, trifecta challenges, blogging for peace, prompts for the promptless, even some photography challenges, although my photos would do best in the category of photography for the challenged.  I link my posts to Facebook and Twitter.  Still trying to get attention from my family.  Doing these things means that I am attracting readers, and it would be a giant lie to say I’m not happy with that.  Some days I am deliriously happy because someone I don’t even know has said something nice to me.

SCD (Photo credit: WarzauWynn)

Having my readership suddenly triple because I stuck to certain topics or post types would probably just shut me up completely for a  bit, it would be that scary.  All I ever wanted was to just blather away happily here about my life and maybe make the odd person laugh or smile or feel sorry for me along the way.

I want some of our family stories to be remembered and the people who were part of them to live on in our hearts.

I love the blogging friends I’ve made and the people I’ve “met” who inspire me every day. This is fun.  I feel like one tiny link in an enormous chain.  I don’t need to stand out or be bigger or more important or have some huge readership fan club cheering me on.  I’ll keep writing until there’s not another coherent thought in my head.  That might have happened yesterday, but what I don’t know can’t hurt me.

I will continue to write, because I don’t know how to stop.  Having people read what I’ve written and sometimes actually get something good out of something I’ve said – that’s a sweet bonus.  An unexpected perk.  You encourage my scribbles, and I am grateful.