Please understand that what I meant when I said these words:

When in fact, I shouldn’t have cared. I’m not writing this for you.

I’m writing this for me.

What I meant is that I shouldn’t care if others are reading. In a way it’s like the journals I keep. I don’t write them for public consumption, but I am also well aware that posterity will permit them to be read after my demise, unless I destroy them as I go. The problem with destroying them as I go is that I can’t refer to the past as I move into the future, and observe how I have changed in any “true” and meaningfully reflective way.

I don’t keep my journals for anyone else, and while this is a form of journaling that allows the world to read my thoughts as I commit them, since I never planned to make a profit from this site, I should never have concerned myself with others reading it. Naturally, there is a dose of dopamine returned when I know someone has, but that addiction shouldn’t be the driver for production.

And yes, I do hope from time to time to influence others, but in most things I am only trying to influence myself to be a better version of me.

I can identify a lot with what you’re saying here. I had multiple blogs, different topics, etc. I get something deeply personal from the act of writing, but the act of publishing to an unknown audience also gave me something.

I remember at one point also thinking… what”s the point anymore? Everyone is going to YouTube, Twitter, Tumblr… all the places that I go myself. And even me, if there are people with independent web sites and blogs out there, I wasn”t even looking for them. So… without even making the conscious decision, I ended up abandoning most of my sites. I still have them, not updated in forever, probably falling apart with unmaintained code and old themes.

But I gotta tell you, even through all of that same period, ever time I got a notice that you had posted something new, I”d get excited. Maybe because I also identified with what you were trying to maintain, and if we were the only two people still doing it that way then maybe it gave me hope… or at least a little excitement to go and read whatever you posted, which was different than just scrolling through the Twitter stream to see what was new.

So…. if you”re really back, and I hope you are, then it just may help inspire me again as well.

For those of us that just might follow you, or somehow find you amidst a stream of all the known social sites, it really does matter that you post. It may be for yourself, but as soon as you publish to the world, never forget its also for others. And you may never know how it effects them. Maybe someone finds a post from a Google search, and ends up being influenced by your words and thoughts. Well you never know. Look, I commented. Wow, that”s a big deal. I would do it again, so keep writing.

Thanks, Christian. I’m glad to know you are doing well.