Why blog?

A good friend of mine called me over the weekend in response to my "Anyone out there?" post. (following instructions must not be his strong suit, I asked for a comment to my post, he called me instead).

In any case, he asked me why the heck I blog. He implied that it 'looked like I was going to a lot of trouble' to blog, and wondered what the motivation is. Given that I was absent from my blog for over 2 years, the motivation still remains to be proven out, but here are the best answers I can give off the top of my head:

Reasons to blog:

1. Kindof / sortof a substitute for sending cards or letters to friends and family (which I never do). As a kid, I remember that my Mom's side of the family would make a tape recorded 'letter' on the new fangled reel-to-reel tape recorder, and send the tape through the mail to other members of the family. It was a cool way to catch up on family happenings, and it was so much richer than a paper letter because of the addition of the voices and sounds. I don't have the patience to do a recording, but a blog is richer than a paper letter (albeit not as personalized), because it is easy to include text, photos and videos in your blog.
2. Quick and easy way to share pictures. I use Picasa to manage digital pictures on my computer, and including one or more pictures on my blog using Picasa is literally a 'one click' exercise. Click the "Blog This" button, write the optional narrative/caption/text, and click submit. Picasa takes care of posting the thumbnail picture and text to your blog, and even takes care of making a full size version of the picture available through a link.

Wow, this has gotten verbose already. Blogs are intended to be short and sweet... easily consumed. I'm going to stop here, and pick up with reason #3 in a future post.