Blogging makes me feel more alive. How about you?

After two full years of continuous blogging, I am more imbued with enthusiasm about life than when I started. I think this is because I am allowed and encouraged to communicate my ideas with more people than ever before.

I spent many years communicating with others with varying levels of success. I noticed after a while that my interest in living waxed and waned as my ability to communicate increased or decreased. I see that this relationship of communication and life seems to be true for others also. Thus it seems logical that more communication, not less is a good thing.

(Communication, as I am using it here, refers to the interchange of ideas not to compulsive or continuous outflow.)

The barriers to communication exist within and outside ourselves, of course, so removal of barriers has to occur in both places in order to communicate freely.

In spite of that, the recent availability of inexpensive blogging tools and technology allows us all to try our hands at communicating on a global scale. Blogging is open communication as it has never existed until now.

We write about something and people from Malaysia to Montana can read it and share their thoughts and feelings about it with us. We are not invading their privacy as with spam or emails, we make something available and they can find out about it by searching for it or subscribing to a feed that informs them of each new article we write.

I get almost instantaneous feedback on how valuable or confusing my communication seems to readers. As a result, I am driven to communicate more effectively.

Furthermore, I begin to identify with my readers and they with me. I share their losses and their successes. I exult in their victories and I want to reach out with encouragement as they struggle to overcome adversity. Their sorrows become mine. In a word, we become friends on a scale never before imagined.

As a result, I feel a huge sense of loss when one of my blogging friends decides to stop blogging. I'm not sure they realize how much their communication means to the rest of us. It feels very much as though another light in the blogosphere has gone out, like a death has occurred.

Fortunately, there are new bloggers joining us every day. I welcome them, because they bring new ideas to share and new friendships to explore.

As long as we stay in communication with each other, we all benefit. We are in for a period of great change because we are creating something which has never existed before on this planet, a universal and unexpurgated database of ideas, discoveries, and conclusions.

I feel that many bloggers will discover that blogging contributes markedly to their mental and physical well-being. I think the future of blogging is so bright we'll have to wear shades...  :)

What are your thoughts about this?

Comments

[susan]

I do agree, that blogging has formed a network of like-minded individuals that would never have been possible. Both the anonymity of blogging--not family, not friends of long standing, not co-workers that we face each day, but people who care enough to commiserate or share the joy, as well as the freedom to write if and when we want is its appeal. We can read, mull it over, then respond; an immediacy that allows spontaneity with some forethought. i've just finished reading Gabriel Garcia Marquez's "100 Years of Solitude." It emphasizes the need for real communication as its characters seal themselves away from those around them. Ironically, it is the writings of their daily history and their ultimate fate that forecasts their doom. weblogging might've saved them!

[Phil Gerbyshak]

David - I couldn't agree more. Blogging definitely provides a sense of community for me, and many of my blog buddies help me get through dark days, either with their posts or with a personal e-mail.

[Andy Kaufman]

Great post David.

You hit the nail on the head. It's a wonderful group to be a part of. It's hard to describe the feeling without participating and experiencing it firsthand.

[Girish]

Dear David, Your words have been reaching my home in India everyday, its so refreshing to see somebody explaining the hazards of corporate life 'matter of factly'. Even though I was always thinking of starting off on my own, your blog has helped me take a few shaky steps. Thanks..

[Tabor]

What brought me to your blog was you entries on housebuilding after I used a blogger search. But you have such an interesting blog large in scope, I am going to bookmark and return...even after your housebuilding adventure is over.