The hardest part about blogging — for me, anyway — is coming up with a topic worth writing about.

I’m a writer and have been since my early teens. So it’s easy for me to write. It’s easy to take an idea and communicate it to others using words, sentences, and paragraphs.

The problem I have is coming up with ideas to write about.

What to Write About?

Sure, I can write about what happened to me yesterday. But is it interesting? Barely. (For the record, I woke up late after being up for 2 hours in the middle of the night, spent some time messing around with some GTD (“Getting Things Done”) software that’s supposed to help me be more productive, ordered pizza for my local helicopter mechanic and a few other pilots, hosted a pizza party at my friend’s hangar (which is insulated and has amenities such as a latte machine and leather sofa), and came back home to waste some more time with the same GTD software (which wasn’t working as advertised) thus not getting much else done.)

I can also write about the things I think about, which can be more interesting when I’ve had time to fully develop my thoughts. Lately, I’ve been thinking about politics, but I don’t feel well informed enough to blog about my thoughts. I’ve also been thinking about the English as the official language issue, but I haven’t finished thinking about it — or reached a stage where I’m ready to write. I’ve been thinking about the pitfalls of living in a town that’s trying to be something it’s not — which is also something that it wasn’t when I moved here — but why waste my time preaching about something that no one cares about?

Why I Blog

I like to start each morning with a blog post. I sit at the kitchen table with my coffee and my laptop and write about whatever comes to mind.

I find this therapeutic. I’m taking my organized thoughts and recording them where I — and others — can read them again and again. Or perhaps I’m taking unorganized thoughts and organizing them as I get them out.

It doesn’t matter to me whether people read what I write. I blog primarily for myself. (Remember, blog is short for Web log and my blog is a personal journal.)

While it’s always nice to have readers who comment to say that they like what I’ve written or add some information I hadn’t known or considered, getting readers or reader participation is not my primary goal. It’s the head-clearing aspect of blogging. Getting it out of my head and onto…well, not exactly paper, but something that’s just as “permanent” and accessible.

Unpublished Blog Posts

Sometimes I’ll start a blog post and never finish it. It’ll remain as a draft on my computer’s hard disk, waiting for future attention it may never get. This isn’t as good as publishing a blog post. That’s not because publishing is the goal. It’s because completion of the thought is the goal and an uncompleted blog post represents an unfinished thought.

I can also assume, when I don’t finish a blog post, is that I didn’t have enough to write about when I began it.

Full Circle

Which brings me full circle with this blog post.

The topic was the lack of topics. And I proved a lack of topics by writing a blog post that didn’t really cover anything in enough detail to make it worth reading.

Have I just wasted my time? It appears so.

Have I wasted yours? Please accept my apologies.