Why blog?

Sarah's recent post about counting followers and this video on Rosalilium about why she got into blogging started me thinking about it, and in fact it's a question I ask myself fairly often.  When a post gets almost no readers, or it's the beginning of the week and I can't think of a song to use for Music Monday, or I write something I'm really pleased with and no-one comments... "why blog?" I wonder to myself.  Sometimes I find it a real chore, and sometimes I'm brimming with ideas.  Sometimes it feels as if only three people in the world ever read what I write *waves to Sarah, Laura and Leanne*, and sometimes a post attracts so many nice comments - both on the blog and in 'real' life - that I feel uplifted and excited. 

The urge to put my fairly mundane thoughts on screen and press 'Publish' so that anyone, anywhere can read them is an odd one.  I came to blogging late, having enjoyed reading various music, lifestyle and fatshion blogs for a good few years before I plunged into the world myself.  I was a fanzine writer and editor in my late teens and the thrill of seeing my own words, hastily typed and cheaply photocopied, has never left me, and over the years I had vaguely wondered if I should start writing again.  I can't remember the precise moment when I decided to start blogging; I know that in the summer of 2010 I put a plea out on Facebook for a good blog name (an ex who answered my plea is to blame for the unwieldy and hard-to-type-into-a-browser name which I eventually settled on).  And then, one chilly March day last year, I came home from work, sat down at my laptop, and started writing. 

Originally I intended the blog to be a fatshion/lifestyle blog.  It didn't exactly work out that way.  My genuine phobia of having my photo taken scuppered the fatshion idea, and my utter failure to lead a life interesting enough to write about did for the lifestyle part.  Over the past year, as I've become more interested and involved in crafting, that has begun to get a mention; my natural curiosity about other people's houses leads me to post about my own home; and my obsession with reading and music was always going to be reflected on here.  But even now, I'm hard pressed to explain to people what exactly it is I blog about: the "lovely stuff" bit of the tagline at the top of the page is the nearest I can come to a definition.

The thing is, what I most enjoy writing about isn't always what people seem to enjoy reading.  I regularly get the most readers for posts I'm kind of 'meh' about, while posts I really like putting together (Music Monday, photo posts about my weekend adventures) garner almost no comments and fewer readers.  Should I amend my writing so it fits into what my audience, evidently, wants?  Or should blogging be about self-expression, and damn the stats?  It's something I often question, but have never quite come up with a satisfactory answer.

One thing I've started doing more of is reflective, "this is what's inside my head" posts.  I don't really want this blog to become a (less razor- and Richey Manic-obsessed) version of the queer/perzine I used to write, but I do enjoy writing about stuff that matters instead of just posting pretty pictures of things I've bought.  I always get amazing responses from my most confessional writing, but publishing those posts is quite a risk to take as a blogger.  For one, there can be something uncomfortably solipsistic about them (although what else is blogging but endless solipsism?!), for another, they involve me putting quite a big part of my self 'out there', and I sometimes wonder if I'm making the right choice by writing about such personal topics.

There's a kind of blogging rule that says you should put out new content regularly: at least every three days, ideally more often. But life gets in the way and sometimes, especially recently, I just don't feel like writing. I find blogging easiest when I'm in a happy and contented place, and for various reasons, I've not always felt like that over the past few months. I still try and post at least three times a week, but I do wonder if perhaps less could be more? Fewer posts, but of higher quality, about stuff I actually care about rather than have written in a panic, thinking, "oh crap, I really need to post today... erm, this'll do".

I've become somewhat rambly now, but I suppose my point is that I don't know the answer: I don't know why I blog.  If you're a blogger, what keeps you writing?  And why did you start?  I'd love to hear about other people's experiences.