Purpose of a Blog?

What is the purpose of a blog?

This is the question I have been struggling with for awhile, thus the long break from writing. I started with a blog a few years ago - a month a challenge sort of deal, where me and two other friends did something 'crazy' for a month and blogged about it. The vegetarian January was great, we all stuck to it, and had some funny blogs. We had a couple other good months but everything had died by around May. Not quite the year we had hoped. In that case the purpose of our blog was the documentation of us doing something new and exciting to spice up our life. Our seemingly mundane, post-college life. We advertised that blog to our friends and had quite the following (ok 15 isn't that great) but people were reading it. Because of that people knew when it crashed.

Since that point, I've continued to have the desire to blog - get my feelings out there, secretly hoping someone will find me funny enough to write a book or movie (bloggers cannot deny this secret desire). I journal basically everyday - so I should be able to type out what I'm feeling everyday, especially because I have a plethora of ideas.

I don't remember what the final catalyst was, except that I was miserably bored at work, no one was on gchat, and I had already eaten the entire work snack cabinet. I created a blog. I decided that I wouldn't tell anyone about this blog until I was a regular. Well that still hasn't happened, thus no one is actually reading this right now. I don't know what my ramifications are for 'success' but it would be more consistent and funnier blogs, so I guess that was the purpose of my second blog. Working on that...

In the midst of reaching for blog success I got a bitter taste of the ugly side of a blog. Where people get the idea that the blogs purpose is their chance to air their accomplishments, joys, complaints, and grievances. This becomes especially tricky when that grievance is about a person. Needless to say, I had my first blog post written against me (not specifically identified ptl). I am a people pleaser and have spent many years and a lot of energy guaranteeing that no one hates me. Therefore this blog shook me, as minor as it was. So then I contemplated the purpose of a blog. I didn't even know how to blog about this incident because I bickered with myself about becoming the person I dislike. But to get to the next question I had to explain my situation. Do people really want to know all my accomplishments, joys, complaints, and grievances? And I have come to the answer of No. People do not want to know everything.

That leaves me perplexed still on what I view as my purpose for blogging. Maybe it is to give a voice to my ideas, a silent voice. Maybe it is to only be positive. Maybe it is to make people think. Who knows. Maybe I will figure it out as I continue blogging. One thing is certain - I will never blog about a situation with a person (minus the explanation above), so rest assured. I leave no closer to the correct purpose of a blog, or even my purpose - maybe a blog doesn't need a purpose.