Is Blogging Worth It?

Sometimes people ask me if they should start a blog. My answer is absolutely if you have something you want to say, and I add the caveat that you might just be saying it to yourself. I don’t know anything about making money blogging. Since I started this blog as a fundraiser for the Food Bank I purposely never put ads or affiliate links. Yes, I could have generated money that way that I gave to the Food Bank, but I wasn’t interested in a commercial venture.

After I finished the official fundraising period I just kept blogging. In May this blog will have its ninth birthday and that is a long time to keep up a daily habit. I started as a weight loss journey and I lost weight, gained weight, lost weight and gained weight and now am working on losing again. Obviously the blog does not control my weight. It does keep me honest.

Sometimes I think I write just for myself, even though I can see the hundreds and sometimes thousands of people who read posts. I appreciate the friends who have stuck with me, no matter how mundane things inevitably get. I just don’t have an exciting enough life to write something inspirational everyday.

Every once in a while things unveil themselves to me that shows me people are reading and are effected by this blog. Yesterday in the mail came two things that would not have happened without the blog. One was a card from the Food Bank notifying me that a friend had donated to the Food Bank in my honor. This fall so many of my kind and generous friends have done that in relation to my receiving an award from the Food Bank. Of course I blogged plenty about it and not to get you to send money, but really, thanks for doing that.

The second thing I got was a thank you note from a friend for no reason except that she wants to send a thank you note everyday for a year. She told me my blog on thank you notes was one of her inspirations and sent me the first one of her year. What a wonderful thing to get in the mail and I was greatly touched by it. Good luck keeping to your plan!

The third thing blog related is I got a call from a friend in Maine whose son got a concussion on January 1. She knew, from reading my blog, that Carter had more than her fair share of concussions and she wanted some advice from a mother’s point of view. I had plenty.

Sitting down to write for twenty minutes a night is not much work in the scheme of things. If I make you laugh, consider a different point of view, inform you of something or just nudge you I am happy for it. For me, this blog acts as my memory, which is invaluable to me. Thanks to all my friends and blog readers I have not met yet for inspiring me. Is it worth it? It is to me.