The Purpose of Blogging
Something that is relatively disputed among those who have been blogging since the proverbial beginning, but aside from the "real" purpose, I have been thinking about my purpose, and the 'general' purpose. Admittedly, my two final projects (for my cinema, vid game class AND my contemporary sociological theory class) involve the use or dissection of blogs. One as a tool and another as a ... a what?

I have always stated that my personal reason for blogging was simply to get things out of my head, toss them around and have the ideas become somewhat of a seperate entity in and of themselves (not all posts fall under this category but still...). I have always maintained that I blog for myself, not for an (imagined) audience. So why not just write a journal offline? I don't really have an answer for that... often the comeback is along the lines of 'sharing my ideas with the world, collaboration, feedback' etc etc. But judging by the number of comments over the history of this blog, I cannot truly say that this space gives me much more than a public venting opportunity. And besides - if I really do blog 'for myself', I wouldn't care about the comments (or lack thereof).

So I am stuck with the question of why do I, Kelly - mother of two, MA student, friend and partner - feel the need to blog on a regular basis? Is it some inate desire to share my thoughts with the world even though I know that I could simply call the three people who actually read this space and have a conversation? And if it is a 'cleansing' of the (sometimes) intellectual mind, what drives me to such a potentially public space? I have a few theories but none of them answer ALL of the questions; and I am not comfortable having random, disjointed answers on this one..