Blogging and the Duck's Quack.

There are several reasons why people who write mostly want to be published. The commonest, I would suggest, is ego. People like to see their name in a by line; it gives them a lift; maybe it makes them feel important. Some people want to make money from their writing, while others feel they have something to teach the world.

To me, there’s only one valid reason. The process of writing involves taking something out of the mind and externalising it. Why some of us feel impelled to externalise our mental processes, I don’t know yet. Maybe it’s just a fundamental need in the human condition: the need to be understood. I’m not even sure whether that’s a valid need or not, but I don’t see why it shouldn’t be. Only the most extreme examples of alienation, natural or psychotic, produce a person who has zero desire to connect in some way with the human community, and connection implies understanding.

So, that being the case, there’s a problem with writing something that nobody ever reads: it produces a sense of short circuit, and that’s frustrating.

This is as true of blogging as it is of writing a novel or an essay on string theory. Writing a blog that nobody reads is a frustrating business because the need that precipitated the effort isn’t being met. The effort, therefore, feels wasted, and that just makes the need even greater.

Fortunately, that isn’t true in my case. Google stats indicate that plenty of people read this blog, but there’s still a problem. I used to receive one or more comments on nearly every post I made, but there have been none at all on the last twenty seven posts.

It’s said that a duck’s quack never echoes, and nobody knows why. This is similar; the externalised workings of my strange mind are evidently being picked up, but there’s no echo. The people receiving them are quiet, invisible, anonymous, and so I don’t know where my thoughts are going or how they’re being received.

It won’t stop me blogging, of course, but I would be interested to know why there’s no echo any more.