So, why blog?

It's not as though this blogging thing is new--or unusual. How many blogs are there? Millions? More? And how many actually matter? Not many.

For a long time, I though that blogging was just about the most arrogant, self-serving activity anybody could undertake (and then came Twitter, but we'll cover that some other time.) Why on earth would anybody want to read, as Homer Simpson once said, "What some nerd thought about Star Trek," or what somebody who might stumble upon CNN.com once a week to watch a video about celebrity diets but otherwise ignores the news thinks about politics?

After resisting blogging for a long time (on a personal level--I've been doing it professionally for three years now), I started to get it. Or, I started to get why I would and should do it. I'm not blogging because I want to "matter." I'm blogging because I like to write, and here I know what you're thinking: don't you write for a living? Well, yes, I do. But as much as I like writing for a trade publication that covers Microsoft (or a group of them, actually), the subject matter I cover at work is, as you might imagine, a tad limiting.

So, for me, this is a virtual rec room, a fun place where I can come and try out lines and experiment with phrases and goof around with sentences and see how it all looks in print--or in pixels, as the case may be. I would be happy for anybody to read this blog or for nobody to read it.

I'm an only child (bear with me; this goes somewhere). When I was a kid, I used to shoot baskets in the driveway because it was something mildly entertaining that I could do on my on. (Take your best shot at a joke here...I'm trying to keep the blog clean...) Anyway, I ended up being lousy at basketball. But I'm a decent writer, so this is my new driveway, my new basketball court. I'm just messing around here. If you want to come and shoot some written hoops with me, great. If not, no big deal. It's just another blog, after all. It doesn't really matter--and it's not supposed to.