This is a spin-off from Dharma's article on what your blog means to you. The discussion in the comments strayed more into why people blog at JU, so instead of continuing the digression, I decided to write up why I'm here in a separate article.
I've experimented with online journals of one variety or another for probably close on 7 or 8 years now. I've done my own on my personal site, I even did LiveJournal for a while but they all were kinda unfulfilling. I wrote, but no one read any of it, it made it all feel kind of pointless. I would spend time putting my thoughts down, trying to make a clear and intelligent point and all I'd get was some anonymous response saying they liked beans or something equally stupid.
What brought me to JU was my impending graduation from college in the fall of 2003. I had long know of Stardock through GalCiv 1 and had actually signed up for a blog account much earlier but never used it. I was making a transition in life and had thoughts I wanted to write down that just didn't fit in the LiveJournal setting. My friends at the time were all still at least a year or more away from graduating themselves so most of the LJ activity was all angsty bullshit and fighting you see in High School and college students who are more into popularity and appearances than they are in substance or real discussion. I was dealing with emotions and events that lacked meaning to most of my friends since they simply hadn't experienced it yet. Few of them could understand how draining and painful it is to hunt for a job, with months of rejections and failed attempts. Many of them hadn't even ever held a part-time job before, so they just didn't get it and all they would ever say was "Oh it can't be THAT bad, get over it". Also, any time I would blog on politics, most of them would just pass on it since it was too many words to read.
In short, it wasn't the type of place the encouraged thoughtful writing or real discussion beyond who was dating who or whatnot.
My first article came on New Years Eve, 2003. I had actually been reading JU for a while before that and had posted several comments, but that was my first article. Initially I intended this blog to be a journal of my job hunt experience. I figured it might be helpful to someone else down the line to see that someone else went through it to, and yeah it sucked in many parts. Very quickly though I branched out into other topics that interested me (games, women, politics etc...) the job articles became secondary, and then pretty much vanished after a point.
Here I was able to post on what I was thinking about, and if what I was thinking about was interesting to anyone else, I would get honest and thought-out responses (well, most of the time anyways) and could have actual discussions with people. No more of the angsty crap, no more popularity bullshit. Here I was with a group of people from all different walks of life, with different opinions and experiences, and for the most part we were all open to talking about almost anything. I had an outlet for my thoughts, and an actual audience that would respond.
JU is my place to vent about life, it's my place to experiment with writing (which is something I don't get enough of an opportunity to do), it's my place to learn new things from interesting people.
I blog here because of the people. Some annoy me, some frustrate me, some amuse me, but most teach me. I've exposed my beliefs to public criticism and my positions have been made stronger because of it. I've also heard from others what they believe and used that to modify my own beliefs. I take the constructive criticisms, the honest feedback and discard the trolls and agitators.
Why are you here?