This Is For Eric Buckley, So That He Might Actually Read It

   Yesterday morning, at work, and as we do just about every single Friday morning, Eric Buckley and I changed shifts.
   Eric and I tend to spend five to ten minutes just chatting about life in general after we're done exchanging more work-specific details.
   

This morning Eric was telling me how he quite often will houseclean his list of Facebook friends, depending on the nature of the things they post. I laughed and asked him whether I should check my list of friends to see if he and I were actually still friends on Facebook. He smiled at this and told me not to worry too much and that he had even noticed my most recent "Neanderings" post on Facebook.
   "It was something about Idiot Men, wasn't it?" he said. He then added, "I didn't actually read it, what was that all about?"
   I was quite happy to go on from there and give him a brief synopsis of what that post was all about. It did, however, once again raise the issue of why I blog and who I blog for.
   I can't tell you how many times people I know who are also Facebook or Twitter friends will ask me about specific things that have happened in my life the same day that I  just blogged about that specific thing and then posted it on social media. In my mind I'm thinking well, if you'd read that post then you'd already know about that race I ran, darn it all!
   In retrospect, though, I am as guilty as the next person when it comes to actually digesting the vast amounts of different types of information appearing on social media. I'm good for looking at a picture and following the caption but sometimes that's about it. If there's actually an article which needs reading then it pretty damn well be about something I'm keenly interested in. And it better be pretty short.
   I think, then, that this may have been a trap I've fallen into from time to time. Whereas a lot of other blogs are quite often topic-specific and therefore might have their own audience, my blog is all over the place as to subject matter and is written more like a freelance newspaper column than a blog, really. I imagine that if I posted three or four times a week with lots of pics and kept things brief, people might actually read my blog posts.
   All of which begs the question why do I actually blog? 
   Well, I certainly don't do it for the money. Many bloggers out there use the process as a means of financial gain, large or small. This generally entails posting ads and occasionally doing sponsored posts. I've never really been interested in doing that and the more of it I see in another person's blog, the less likely I am to read that blog.
   The principal reason I write a blog is that I have ideas in my head and I enjoy getting them out. I enjoy that there is any kind of an audience and appreciate the occasional positive response. Blogging is quite often cathartic, as well. This was especially true when my Dad was ill and eventually passed. Not suspecting the outcome from the beginning, I started writing simply to update friends and family on how he was doing. As things changed, I really couldn't stop blogging about it. It truly helped me come to grips with what I saw happening before my very eyes.
   

So, if all else fails, I'm betting that Eric Buckley will read this blog post. And if he never reads another one, well, that's okay too because I really like Eric and that has nothing to do with whether he actually reads my blog posts or not! Next, I may need to work on Kathy, Deb, Bill, Bob, Chris, Sarah, Ginny, Nathan, Tara............
   And in the meantime, Eric, thanks for giving me something to write about!