The primary reason that I continue blogging, after more than 5 years and 1400 posts, is because it helps me sort out my thoughts. On several occasions when I stopped blogging (after my wife died and when I felt apathetic about blogging), I thought I would continue writing offline, but for some reason, it wasn’t the same. I like the WordPress platform for writing. I like being able to pull up something I wrote from any device, any time. I like being able to edit on the fly as I catch errors or think of a better way to say something. Also, knowing my posts are publicly accessible forces me to think more before I publish them. Although I write primarily for myself, it is my hope that my posts may help others who may stumble across them. And, I don’t want to cause harm or offense to others, althoughI undoubtedly do occasionally offend some readers.
You don’t want to read the posts that I never publish. Neither do I.
Sometimes, I’ll spend several hours writing and then save the post as an unpublished draft. When I review it the next day, I realize I’m ranting about something I already covered in a previous post or I’m voting because I’m angry with someone or that my post is mean, spiteful or would be potentially hurtful if the person I’m writing about read it.
Fortunately, I delete nearly all of them without ever publishing them.
Still, the writing process of these posts has a net positive effect that is very similar to the round of “stuff purging” that I recently completed. When I am finished, these thoughts are purged from my mind the same way my stuff has been purged from my home.
