Why do I carry on this blog?

Once you've started one of these things, you can't stop, can you? Well, I could just walk away, forget to turn on the computer and call back in in three months' time to see if anyone passes by this way. But it would feel kind of wrong. Very wrong, in fact. I mean, even though there aren't so very many of you who regularly check back in here, you already feel like a circle of friends. Can't just let everybody down, can you? (Can you?...) I have let friends down before, come to think of it, but it's just so nice to call in here and find that a familiar name has left a comment or taken a few minutes to read my musings.

...Do you look at the pics, I wonder? Or is it just me that's delighted with the rather fuzzy outpouring of my dinky little camera? I don't mind. I'm having fun. Can't expect gold stars for photos of the paintwork peeling off our neighbour's roof...

My cousin JT has no idea what she started - see the long entry from yesterday. Or should I give the credit to the US Marine whose weblog first gave me the idea? In either case, blogging has opened up a whole new dimension. I'm in touch with you guys more than with many of my 'offline' friends, do you realise! A couple of the latter now check in on the blog, which is nice.

And now that I have a blog, I look at things differently. I spot things that I think would make nice pics to show what Amsterdam is like. I remember little incidents that would make a good entry. And I keep a blog-eye open when reading the papers or listening to the news. Not even a fraction of those possible blogs-to-be actually end up posted here but it's still fun.

Blogging is a way of making something out of the little moments.

Blogging makes your life an ongoing creation.

Blogging is a way of sharing aspects of your life that would normally just stay with you.

Writing your own blog is only the half of it, of course. Reading others' blogs and following their lives is also fascinating. (Here we come full circle, back to why I began in the first place.)

I love the way the things you say on your blogs so often give me a new insight, more food for thought. Words are powerful. They create ripples in lives in distant places, long after you've written them and left the scene.

Be warned if you start one: a blog takes on a life of its own.