Why?

At the outset of any blogging enterprise lies the fundamental question: Why? Why do this? Why put my thoughts out for the world to see, galk at, attack, even rally around? Will anyone care? Will anyone even read? If the latter answers are no, why bother? Just to collect my own thoughts? If the answers are yes, then this whole thing is a different matter. But either way, is this not just an exercise in vanity?

Many bloggers try to tackle these issues head on, early on, with some sort of ontological exposition. I find most such explanations rather unsatisfactory and usually self-indulgent. Which could explain why many ignore those questions completely and launch into their e-careers. Ironically I find the lack of any stated purpose to be equally unsatisfying.

I have no easy answers, but I do feel compelled to say something. I don't know if anyone will read, or find it interesting. And I don't know if this is a useful way to collect and express my own thoughts. I can only describe what brings me to this place. The short answer to that "what" is simple: insomnia. I am five days into a bout of bronchitis...a late summer cold in short. It is remarkable what one thinks about as one lay awake, sometimes for hours on end, rousted by one's own coughing. I found myself composing mental essays on everything from the election to the Lambeth Conference, the geography of 19th century California to the problems with the Pelagian heresy. Obama, McCain, blogs, bishops, the media, the fires, the lost colony of Roanoke, the real landing place of Sir Francis Drake, whether I should take a vacation this year, and where I would go, all swirling around in my head. Laying there in the dark, swimming in a sea of disordered thought, the answer became clear, I simply must start a blog.

Insomnia....I wonder how many other blogs began in just this way.

Now mind you I have been tempted to start a blog many times before. When our Episcopal Diocese elected its current bishop two years ago, I actually thought about liveblogging the convention, as was common at the time in dioceses like Tennessee. But church savvy folk will know that things were interesting in Tennessee. They were downright dull in Northern California. But I knew things the general public did not, and the siren song of blogging was very strong indeed. Despite the lure of inside knowledge, despite the encouragement of folks like my brother, I have spent quite a bit of time resisting the temptation. It has been a rather easy temptation to resist. I spend much of my time reading other people's blogs and even commenting on some. But in the past few months the wear and tear of comment-sections has begun to take a toll on me. So much petty partisanship, be it over the election or the state of the Episcopal Church. So much time spent scoring cheap points, excoriating one's opponents. It is so taxing that I have almost completely given up making comments, or even seriously reading them. Even now I am almost talking myself out of this enterprise.

But as my insomnia has laid bare, I simply have too much roaming about my head. Too many ideas, too many loose neurons. Perhaps putting them out in a log, even a weblog, will put them in some order. And perhaps my friends and friends yet unmet will join me in dialog on some of them. Still it could be a risky venture. I have seen blogs rise and fall with great rapidity. I read somewhere recently that the average blog lasts less than three months, and has virtually no readership. That is a destiny I think I will embrace, if it comes, for then at least my cold will be gone and I'll be getting proper sleep. So, appropriately on this day, the Feast of the Transfiguration, I find myself changed, from an observer to a participant, from a commenter to a poster.

Besides, I have really too much time on my hands, and this will serve as a distraction. Frankly, I give myself a month.