Bloggers on the Reasons Behind Their Daily Words

Some blog for one reason, then end up blogging for another:

· "I started blogging when I was deployed to the Green Zone in Baghdad and the funniest thing happened: I got an e-mail from my 13-year-old daughter saying, 'I don't even know who you are anymore.' The strange thing about it was that for the first time she actually was learning about who I am -- what I think, what some of my opinions are; things that did not come up in our normal daddy/daughter relationship."

For some, blogging is akin to a prison break:

· "Having lived with the same woman for nearly 20 years and learning from her that nothing I had to say was ever [emphasis in original] right, I discovered early that things worked best between us if I would just keep my mouth shut. Well, one can only imagine what it must have felt like after the kids were grown and we finally parted company. I could actually begin to write and speak my mind without the slightest fear of reprisal or being made to feel like an idiot. I understood what the freedom to speech was truly about."

Some are brutally honest about why they blog:

· "Everyone in America thinks that they can write an interesting book, open a great restaurant, or that their life would make an intriguing reality TV show. A personal blog is just the hot new thing along that line of thinking. It gives people the opportunity to live out the fantasy that they are special, without actually having to put in too much effort."

· "Ever found it easier to fess up in a bar, than to your mom or best friend? I also think that many of us are closet exhibitionists, the way society is structured does not allow us to be that way in every day life, but here we can hide behind our relative anonymity and strip away whatever layers we want others to see."

· "I blog because I have a desire to feel wanted or needed by people whom I've never met."

Some (if only more) blog to be polite:

· "G'day! . . . Friends can have a laugh or a think if they choose to visit my site, but I'm not bothering people with group emails. That is key!"

And there are the poets:

· "When I started blogging, I ran into a maxim, which I'll paraphrase: If only the birds with the best song sings, the forest will be very quiet."

Of course, we have the haters:

· "28.7 million blogs translates to almost 28.7 million illiterate fools with a digital soapbox who cannot manage to correctly spell the word 'definitely,' even with the help of a spellchecker."