This Blog Left Intentionally Blank

The wife and I run a monthly card game at our house. Nothing serious; just a group of friends playing mainly for bragging rights. Most of the traffic to the game’s blog comes from the regular players. The last couple of days, however, one post in particular has been seeing a lot of traffic from Facebook. I asked the guy who is the subject of the post if he was linking to it from his Facebook page, and oddly, he doesn’t even have a Facebook page.

Just yesterday I saw another referring link from a particular person’s Facebook profile, so I decided to check it out, look her up, find out who the hell was hitting my blog from Facebook. Well, in order to look at someone’s profile, you have to have a Facebook account. So I signed up. And started making friend requests when it suggested people that I might know. And I updated my profile to includes a link this blog. I now have a full-blown Facebook account.

Dammit.

I don’t have any delusions that anybody will actually read any of the stuff I write here, much less become a repeat visitor, but now I feel the pressure to keep up with all these things. If I have a Facebook page, I have to keep it up. If I have a blog, I have to write. Granted, I don’t necessarily need to join the Web 2.0 party, so whatever pressure I feel is completely self-induced. But whatever mental bulldog I’m trying to feed with this here blog is scratching at the pantry door, waiting for his kibble.

Better open the door.

–Ant.

This is my third attempt at starting a personal blog. I think it’s my third. Maybe my fourth.

Why do people start these things? Why on earth would someone publish his or her diary online? Is it insecurity? Hubris? Loneliness? I have no idea. I will admit that I’m starting one (again) because I love to write, and I don’t really have an outlet, save emails I send to clients and the occasional posts on the blog for our monthly poker game. I don’t think I’m particularly good at it, at least not compared to the pros, but I do enjoy crafting a well-worded sentence. I don’t know. Maybe I’m OK at it. I’m told I am, anyway.

Hopefully this will be the kick in the pants I need to start writing seriously. My wife was in a play called Fiction in which the character Michael says, “I don’t like to write, I like to have written“. Well, I do like to write, but I have no idea what to write about, and I’m in love with the idea of being a writer. Quite the pickle.