Justin Li

Why I Write

2008-02-09

Sometimes I question why I write on this bloody thing, since only about 7 people a day read this. Although, from the angle that 7 strangers (alright, maybe 4 strangers) is reading this, it's pretty amazing what the internet can do.

Ahem. Anyway (that sounded like one of my friends), why I write. Since November last year I've decided that I would write in my personal journal less often, in favor of writing daily here. I would import whatever posts sounded interesting back into my journal. Since then, I've tended to still write in my journal once or twice a week, but that's compared to the every other day average for the past five years.

I think part of the reason I've decided to do that was that college is presenting me with a lot of new things, new ideas to contemplate. My journal, as I've said before, is mostly for personal stuff, and although I would occasionally write about computer science, that's the limited extent to which I put academics into it. This blog gives me the freedom to jot down fancy ideas I have, so I could reference it later. It's really not so much that I have a separate space for writing, but a different GUI to look at, so my personal and intellectual thoughts are - at least visually - separated.

That, and I find writing fun, and would like to be better at it.

This being a public blog though, I've been hoping that more people would read what I write. A little narcissistic, I know, but I think part of the reason blogs (as opposed to a private journal) are popular is because people want to share their thoughts. Sharing, by definition, needs other people to participate.

In a campaign to make other bloggers feel better about their blogs, I subscribed to several random blogs, blogs which I thought had a personality to them. One of them was also in French, because I would like to get better. This all portrays me as a very shady stalker-ish person, but I promise that's not the case. Maybe I'll comment and introduce myself. I guess, when I say the blogs have a "personality", that's what I mean: they wouldn't mind me commenting, and would be interested in making friends.

One can hope, right?