Why Do We Blog?

Thu 31 July 2025

A few days ago, I was reading someone's blog (I don't remember who)* that was talking about the art and the "why" of blogging (or it might've been in a chat conversation, I'm not sure). I had been thinking of posting something about it, because when I told someone IRL that I have a blog, they asked me if I had monetized it, and my answer was, "Why in the world would I sell my soul and my readers for a few measly dollars a month?"

So, if money isn't the reason (and it really shouldn't be—it is the most servile motivation for doing anything), what is?

I think of the old adage of the mountain climbers: "Why do you climb?" The obvious response, "Because it's there!" As an old joke goes, when asked "Why do you do what you do?" the spelunker answers, "Because it isn't there!"

I think of blogging like spelunking: We look to what isn't there. We write what hasn't been written; we capture in a moment of inspiration words that have been waiting the entire age of the universe until now to be inscribed with pen, pencil, charcoal, or bytes for the betterment of all.

Now, the necessarily wizened among us would likely retort, "What do you mean, 'it hasn't been written yet'?!? It's all been written: by better authors, by AI slopvalanche, or if nothing else, The Library of Babel!"

True, true. But ultimately, I'm not competing with Borges, Shakespeare, Hemingway, an AI-automated room full of furious typewriter-pounding monkeys, or even you, gentle reader.

I am competing with me. To see if I can produce beauty from the ashes of life all around me.

And that is why I write.

Addendum

*Silly me, it was the excellent OrbitalMartian, of course!


100 Days to Offload 2025 - Day 48

Category: Writing Tagged: 100DaysToOffload Beauty Humor Life Non-religious post Non-technical post Philosophy Prose Writing


My Favorite GUI Programs

Sun 27 July 2025

Background

Yesterday, I wrote about why I loved the command-line, and one of my good Fedifriends commented that while he appreciated a good command-line program, he generally preferred GUIs (Graphical User Interfaces).

My personal history in computing started with what you might call command-line computers, although I think it's more …

Category: Tech Tagged: 100DaysToOffload Computing FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) Linux Non-religious post Non-technical post Productivity Retrocomputing

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Anker SoundCore P30i mini-review

Tue 22 July 2025

Time for another little hardware review.

Background

I've been getting complaints that the small, inexpensive bluetooth earbuds (Skullcandy Dime XT/XT2) I had been carrying around for the past five years have pretty poor audio quality during phone calls (likely no microphone noise cancellation), so I started looking around again …

Category: Tech Tagged: 100DaysToOffload Entertainment FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) Music Non-religious post Non-technical post Polemic Productivity

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A Time-Traveler's Guide to Affordable Computing

Thu 17 July 2025

Greetings! If you are reading this, it means you were selected by TODD (the Temporal Observation Directorate Division) for a temporal excursion. Since you're a member of the Computing Sciences History Reading Room, you will no doubt want to brush up on how to procure computing resources in your assigned …

Category: Humor Tagged: 100DaysToOffload Amiga Computing Personal favorites Hobbies Humor Non-religious post Polemic Productivity Retrocomputing Science Fiction

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