Why do I blog?

In my late teens, I started to keep a diary. I religiously sat down to write a daily entry each day. If I missed a day, I'd write two entries the next day. I was pretty hardcore. It was mostly pretty uneventful stuff. Nothing very heavy. Just what I'd done that day, who I'd been with, and thoughts about what had happened. Anyone who'd have read it would have been asleep halfway through the first entry.

I stopped writing it somewhere in my early 20s. Why? In short, it wasn't a priority anymore. I found myself missing more and more daily entries, until I decided the millstone of daily entries wasn't something I wanted to keep up. Life had moved on. I'd started my first job. I'd new friends, and a thriving social scene. Finding the time to put pen to paper was just too scarce.

Then in the late 90s along came blogging. Around that time my job had taken off and I'd become one of the world's leading experts on a software application. I'd frequent the application's peer-to-peer forums, and answer questions. I found it immensely satisfying. It wasn't just helping others. I learned stuff too. It was interesting seeing how others were trying to achieve something I'd never thought of. It led to many discussions on how to meet their objective.

As time went on, I found myself repeating solutions. Wouldn't it be a better use of my time to record these somewhere and just provide a link. A blog was born, which led to an even greater exposure in my industry. The vendor invited me to speak at industry conferences and take part in expert panels. I was on their beta test team, and often input into the application's product development.

As with anything related to technology, change is the only constant. Over time the application changed beyond recognition, and my career took me into management. I was back in the time poor continuum. Blogging wasn't important enough again.

So here I am again. I like the informal nature of blogging. Unlike most of the writing I do in my day job, there's no real structure or rules. I can let my thoughts flow. I can't promise some earth shatteringly important news, but I hope it's interesting for you to read.