Why do I blog???

I was reading another bloggers post, and she was stating her reason for blogging, and a lot of it depended upon the amount of comments she gets. Her reason for blogging was only for entertainment, and the entertainment she gets on the comments. She also stated that if comments do not start to increase, she will stop blogging. Apparently this girl gets several hits a day, like 100+ and was only getting about 5-7 comments on average.

The got me thinking, (she continues to blog by the way), why do I blog?? What is the purpose of typing my thoughts and posting them on the Internet for others to read? OK, yeah, I do do it for the comments, but as you have noticed, my record is 8 for a Woman to Woman post I did two weeks ago. And most of the time, I don't get more than 4. Whoop-di-do. I don't care how many or how little the comments are. It is fun and feeds my ego a bit when others do comment. But I don't think that is the full reason of why I blog.

I blog because I can connect with people. I am in a fairly isolated place in my life. We are only living here for a year; my husband is either at school or studying so we do not get out much (hence the excitement for last week); since I'm only here for a year, I don't plan on making a ton of friends, I have a few, and that's all I need; this ward is not as friendly as many other wards I have been in and when I am at church, my time lately has been spent between the nursery and the Young Women's room doing camp stuff; my friends that I speak to on a weekly, sometimes daily basis live in Montana, Utah, Arizona, South Carolina, Virginia, Texas, and California, so I can't just hop on over to their houses like I used to.

We lived in Germany for two and a half years. I felt like I was able to travel the world, that I had opportunities everywhere to go and explore. Here, I feel trapped. Texas (OK, Texas is pretty big, I'll be more specific) San Antonio is not a place that I would ever want to live. In Germany I could travel six hours and be in Paris, or if I went the other way, Austria, Czech Republic, or in 8 hours, Poland. If I went south for 2 hours, I could go to Switzerland. I could get on a plane, and in an hour and a half, I was in Ireland, and had flown over the UK. Here, I drive six hours west, and I'm still in Texas. Very disturbing for me...

So, with the isolation, I live through my computer and my phone. Connecting with people from all over helps me to feel that I'm not alone, and that even though my ward is pretty crappy, there are still people out there that are willing to be my friends. Even if they haven't met me or heard my child yell at the top of the lungs in the dead quiet of sacrament meeting "but mom, I TOLD you I DON'T want to go to PRIMARY!!". I've shared more things on this blog that I probably haven't shared with people that I've met since being here. Yet these people that I don't know are getting this window into my life. And I get to see into theirs. And I LOVE it. My best friend and I, who have known each other since we were 8, have learned new things about each other since blogging. (sigh, that's 21 years shell)

I love having a place to put down my thoughts, and read others thoughts. I love it because I feel very little, if any, judgement. I love that even though we are SO different in so many ways, we still can relate to each others experiences. To me, this is what friendship should be like.

So, even if my house suffers or my children are climbing on my lap as I type, I will continue to blog and to lurk in blog-land. It helps me get through the day, the week, and this year. And the next year when Matt is done with this part of the schooling, and he will actually be in a hospital doing PA things and having strange schedules.

If you feel so inclined, let me know why you blog. It would be interesting to know why.