Who actually reads this?

It’s an honest question, not some whiny rant, because I’ve been surprised lately.

When I first started this blog, I really had no expectations. My best friend blogged and suggested to me, he bought me my domain name, even installed the wordpress software for me (so if you don’t like the layout it’s his fault), so I really just had to write. And I did, though not as frequently as I thought (it’s surprisingly hard for me to write regularly).

If I had to classify this blog as something, it would be a public diary. That’s an oxymoron right? And obviously what I write isn’t the most absolute personal thing in my life - I don’t ever plan for this to become some place where I recap my day and talk about what I ate, who I like, who I’m annoyed with, etc. But it’s a diary in the sense that I write the thoughts in my mind (not random one sentence thoughts). There’s no way to quantify this, but I feel that I think a lot. And they aren’t necessarily brilliant ground breaking thoughts, but one of my favorite parts of the day is walking between classes. And that’s because the walks between classes are times when I can just put on my headphones and think - no conversations, no lectures, no work, just flat out thinking.

But this “diary” is online, so it’s undoubtedly public, and that’s by choice. But it’s not as public as facebook, or talking about these things head-on in conversation, and that was always appealing to me. Not because I don’t want to have those personal conversations, but because I like the feeling of being able to write whatever I want to write and throwing it out there. I don’t want to parade what I think to everyone in the world, but I like having it out there for people (some which I probably don’t even know) to see, agree, disagree, whatever. Honestly I didn’t think many read it other than a handful of close friends, 3-5 at most.

So that’s why it’s so interesting for me when I hear that people actually have read it, and continue to read it. Even if it’s not meant as flattery, I somewhat take it as that - because to me it means that a person actually thought it worth his/her time to read what I have to say. At first I thought having more people read my blog would ruin the relative anonymity I get from posting on it. But it doesn’t, it actually makes me want to write more. I don’t care who reads this, but it means a lot to me when people I actually know do read it.

An hour ago I saw that a friend on campus actually went back about 10 posts to comment on something I’d written a long time ago - I would have never seen that coming. I apologize if this post kind of seems poorly constructed or without a point; it’s definitely stream of consciousness. But really I want to thank anyone who does read this, and voice my appreciation. I’ll admit most of the comments I get are spam, but it feels great to get one that has thought and effort behind it. And it’s really cool to have someone mention something I blogged about in conversation,, it’s not something that I wouldn’t have predicted when I first started this thing.

I have to start working on a more focussed post now that’ll hopefully be up in a day, but thanks again to anyone who reads this.