Suzanne's Mom's Blog

I love the self-deprecating humor of cartoons about blogging and am thinking that other bloggers might be amused by these. Let me know if you can’t read what they say.

After taking my cartoons off the fridge and photographing them, I got to wondering why people blog in the first place and decided to do a Google search on the phrase “why I blog.” Turns out, quite a few bloggers have posted on that very topic.

At Medium, Rybo Chen lists eight reasons for blogging: to build character and discipline, share thoughts and lessons learned, read more and learn more, have great conversations, become a better thinker, build healthy habits, and build a personal brand. Most of those sound reasonable to me — except that I have no interest in building my personal brand. What would I do with it once it got built?

Melissa at Patheos seems to be using her blog to help her work out the effects of an unusually restrictive childhood. Or, as she puts it, “This is my own little place to think and process stuff. I have found a voice through writing here.” She originally kept her writing from people she knew and considered shutting down when she was found out. I have noticed that the blogging motivations of several visitors to my site are similar to hers.

The blogs Pinch of Yum and Sally’s Baking Addiction have the same origins: the bloggers love sharing recipes. But it’s more than that. Sally says, “That isn’t the only reason why I blog. (It was certainly the reason why I started!) As the years pass and I learn more about blogging – and myself – I’ve grown to appreciate the many blessings that blogging brings to me both professionally and personally.” She lists eight things, including “healing,” which I found intriguing.

Lindsay at Pinch of Yum — a former 4th grade teacher and current full-time blogger who lives in Minnesota with husband Bjork — lists 10 reasons for loving what she does, including helping others start their own blog and sharing photography tips in a food photography eBook.

Lauren Hooker at Elle & Co. gives six reasons she blogs, including that it enables her to share her design work and attract clients.

My reasons for doing this blog have evolved — or perhaps I should say “have clarified” — over the 7-1/2 years I’ve been writing it. At first, the wish to help Suzanne sell jewelry was equal with the pleasure of blogging, which I had been doing at work already. Suzanne and Erik said that they knew I liked it and that having a blog tied to Luna & Stella‘s contemporary birthstone-jewelry business would be helpful.

I don’t think I’ve been all that helpful, but it’s true that one time a woman wrote Suzanne that she didn’t usually like to buy from online businesses that she didn’t know but was reassured after getting a sense of what Suzanne’s Mom was like.

What has been clarified is that I enjoy the routine of writing every day and I love not only reading the curious articles but editing them. After all, I worked for years as an editor because I liked editing. There’s real satisfaction in trying to find the points that are most likely to click with readers. I also like coming up with photos — my own or borrowed — and learning the technical stuff involved in placing them.

Getting to know my commenters is also a treat, but what’s surprising is that it is a pleasure that is somehow separate from the pleasure of writing the posts. I need to think more about how that works.

Since so many of you blog, too, I’d love to hear why you do it and under what circumstances you could see yourself giving it up. I myself expect to keep going as long as I have my wits about me.