This from a recent Times article that explored why people Twitter. I would include Facebook status updates and even a lot of blogging as being relevant to this passage:
The clinical psychologist Oliver James has his reservations. “Twittering stems from a lack of identity. It’s a constant update of who you are, what you are, where you are. Nobody would Twitter if they had a strong sense of identity.”
“We are the most narcissistic age ever,” agrees Dr David Lewis, a cognitive neuropsychologist and director of research based at the University of Sussex. “Using Twitter suggests a level of insecurity whereby, unless people recognize you, you cease to exist. It may stave off insecurity in the short term, but it won’t cure it.”
For Alain de Botton, author of Status Anxiety and the forthcoming The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work, Twitter represents “a way of making sure you are permanently connected to somebody and somebody is permanently connected to you, proving that you are alive. It’s like when a parent goes into a child’s room to check the child is still breathing. It is a giant baby monitor.”
Is this blog just me shouting at a wall that bounces my voice back to me? I mean, seriously, nobody reads it except my wife and a handful of friends on occasion. I tell myself it’s a scrapbook of ideas, a memory tool really. So much that I would like to remember, I forget entirely if I don’t write it down. I retain the blurry image that I can’t put my finger on. With this blog though, I CAN put my finger on it, at least part of the time.
I wonder, is it PART of my identity, or a compensation for my lack of identity? What about your blog?
Answer: Sometimes a little of both.