It's a curious thing, isn't it? Putting in the public domain stuff that may never be read by another soul...

So why do it?

Blogging reflects a desire to communicate, I suppose. I like getting information from other people's blogs about what they've done, and where they've been, and how they did things, and what they thought of them. So I guess I want to make my two cents' worth available, even if nobody accesses it.

It also reflects a big desire to remember. A close relative of mine died of Alzheimer's disease, and lived the last years of her life in a fog. So I dread forgetting. But I also keep a diary, and lots of photos, so blogging is just an additional tool. I guess it's another kind of diary -- thematic, as opposed to chronological.

But, most importantly, I think, blogging represents one element of the desire to take charge of your life -- to construct it, and make sense of it. Publicly narrating ourselves gives us agency. We pick out the bits we want to emphasize, and let go of the bits we're not so interested in. We're editing ourselves -- not with the intention of hiding anything, or being someone we're not, but with the intention of finding out who we are, and what we want. What I choose to write about is what I find significant, and want to do more of. It's one assertion, amongst many others, that "this is me".

How we remember, how we narrate, how we choose, how we adapt -- all this gives us much more autonomy as individuals than we often realize.