To Blog or Not to Blog?

It is the age old question first posed by historically great thinkers like Aristotle or Socrates or that Julie girl from the move Julie and Julia--should I presume to think that other people might have any interest whatsoever in reading my rambling, sometimes incoherent, and always inconsequential thoughts? That's the question that you have to ask yourself when deciding whether or not to start a blog.

In some ways a blog is like that powder blue diary that I got for my birthday back when I was 10 or so (not that this blog has a picture of a pink bear with balloons on it anywhere or a cunning little padlock with a real metal key--it would be cool if it did though!--um, the padlock, not the pink bear of course!). A blog can be a place for people to rant about their pet peeves . . . or a place to stretch those creative muscles (the gray ones under your skull) . . . or a way to document an ongoing relationship/job/project/etc. . . . or simply a stream of consciousness writing about nothing much in particular. However, the big difference between that powder blue diary and a blog (besides the shocking lack of a shiny little padlock with a working key, of course!) is that it puts all of those words out there for anyone to read.

So, you've got to ask yourself if that's a good thing. Do you want other people to know how much you a) hate your boss, b) hate your coworkers, c) wish that cute guy at the table next to you in Starbucks would get off his computer and notice you, or d) all of the above (purely hypothetically of course!). As anyone on Facebook knows, these days we tend to know WAY too much about friends, random acquaintances, and people we don't even know but someone we know does. [Do I really need to know that Roger in Cleveland just went up a level in Mafia Wars? Do I really care that Great Aunt Francis is playing Bingo in an hour? Do I even want to know that my best friend's sister in law is planning to spend the day cleansing her colon? NO!!!!] Hence, the question in the title of this post--to blog or not to blog?

I guess by the very fact that this blog exists, "we" all know how I answered that one. However, I'm pretty sure that next to no one will ever read anything that I write here, so I probably shouldn't spend so much time with these deep philosophical questions! I do have to give a shout out to Shakespeare for lending me the classic if well-worn phrase "To be or not to be" as a basis for the question in the title. It is really amazing how often we use Shakespeare in every day conversations! Read one of Will's plays sometime and you'll find all sorts of familiar phrases. However, I sometimes wonder how happy he'd be to have them used for such ridiculous purposes and twisted in so many ways--re: the title of this post. Of course, being remembered and remaining a part of popular culture for 400 years or so is nothing to sneeze at! Most likely NONE of the scads of bloggers out there will gain that renown--including (now that I've ventured into this endeavor) me.

Well, I might not do good old Will proud by any stretch of the imagination, but hopefully, I'll actually be able to find enough to say to keep this going . . . I won't scare myself or anyone else by mentioning how many, many, many pages in that powder blue diary remain blank to this day!

And to anyone who was silly enough to actually read this and might even now be grinding your teeth in rage at the gratuitous and pretty random mention of Shakespeare in this post, there is a cautionary message right at the top of the blog, so you can't say that I didn't warn you!