Why blog, why snap pictures, why write?
The man who writes about himself and his own time is the only man who writes about all people and all time.
– George Bernard Shaw
When I realized that I wasn’t going to be able to have my own children and it looked definite that we would not be adopting, I got up one more morning and said why bother to save any of photographs or my writings. I had for years kept meticulous archives of photos from holidays and trips and I had also kept journals and journals of writing, never mind the fiction and nonfiction I had written through the years.
A woman wrote to the paper the other day wondering why she should bother continuing to keep a journal when she had no one to hand it down to – the response was the local library in her community might want such a journal as a posting of the times.
Why bother to keep a blog? Why bother to write? I edited and helped write a book for an accoustical engineer who told me he doesn’t read fiction or nonfiction for that matter – didn’t see any reason. I told him fiction, perhaps first and foremost, and nonfiction, tell of the human condition, what it is to be a human being, to live in a certain time, a particular place.
How could you not read?
How much pleasure does looking at old snapshots bring? And so what if it is just for me?