What Blogging Has Done For Me

I first started blogging in March 2008 and since 2009, I’ve been posting a new Bo’s Café Life strip on my blog six days a week. Some days it’s difficult to sit down and think of something to post. Some days, I ask myself, Why am I still doing this? I had one of those days recently so I decided to write a list, a list to read when I need to remember why I blog.

• Blogging helped me to find my voice. By letting me get immediate feedback on my work, blogging helped me to find my voice as a humorist. And today, I still rely on commentors to let me know when my humor works—and when it doesn’t. 
• Blogging enables me to share my writings with others.  Four years ago, I was anti-blogging. I only wanted to get published in the “respected” print publications. That was until both The Atlantic and The Village Voice rejected a humorous—but controversial—piece I wrote about Starbucks. I believed in the piece and I knew that there was an audience for it… so I emailed the blog editor at The Huffington Post and he said I could post it and other pieces. That was when I became a blogger. And later, when I couldn’t find a publication that was willing to publish my humorous pieces about marketing, I was able to post those pieces on Chief Marketer’s Big Fat Marketing Blog. Today, I still post pieces that have been rejected by publishers. Without blogging, those pieces would have died on my laptop.
• Blogging gives me a reason to write when I feel like giving up. Every time I feel like giving up I’ll get an encouraging comment from a reader, a reader who says that my comic strip made her day. When I feel like quitting, I remind myself that there are people who visit my site every single day and hope to find something funny to read. I don’t want to let them down.
• Blogging enables me to make new friends around the country and around the world. When I visited Colonial Williamsburg, I had coffee with a writer I met through my blog. And when I visited West Virginia, I attended the local writers group meeting; I met some of the members through my blog. It’s a great feeling to know that from Indiana to Istanbul, I have friends who will meet me in a café and talk to me about writing over a cup of coffee.  

I hope this list helps you the way it has helped me. And if I missed something, please share it with me.

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