"In my craft or Sullen Art"

In a round-about way I was tagged by Wolfgirl – actually, I went into this wittingly and chose to take the option. I chose to take the option because I found the questions a bit interesting and chose to respond to them as follows. OK?
The tagging rules herein go as follows, but don’t feel compelled to follow them at all. Anyway, at the ‘official’ level it goes like this:

Post a similar post to this one and add a link back to the person who tagged you.* List 5 reasons why you blog about the things you blog on your blog.* Choose your 5 tag ‘victims’ and tag them nicely.* Write a comment on their blog letting them know that you tagged them.

So, the basic question is. "Why am I here?" Well, many years ago my mother linked up with this guy – oh, sorry, it’s a more philosophical and abstract question. So, as follows I will attempt to answer a question for which I have no definitive answer, since it invariably depends on my mood of the day.

1. I am compelled to write. I am stealing this motivation right from Wolfgirl. Writing is my way of keeping centered and rational. Even when I go on vacation I write, or I compose in my mind. In the old days I always took a notebook and kept a personal journal, and in recent years it’s been a laptop. I go through withdrawal, almost literally, if I am away from writing for too long. Of course, I’ve written to keep bread in the larder for years, but it’s much more than a job. It’s my best way of being acquainted with my own thoughts and processes. Long before I went into the newspaper business, I wrote. And in that, even if I’m not paid for it, I’ll never really retire.

2. It keeps me connected. I admit it, I Google myself in a fairly regular basis just to see who has picked me up and put me in the (often vain) hope that somebody might want to pay me for my musings. I’m not money-obsessed in any way, but I do like to pay the mortgage and to travel, and money is needed for both. What better way to pay the bills than by doing something I genuinely love.

3. It allows me to hone my craft on a virtually daily basis. As I have mentioned in the past, I wrote a column for many years and that was one of the most fulfilling things I’ve ever done in a somewhat multi-faceted life. I liked connecting with people in such a manner. I would have written a column even if I hadn’t been paid for it. At one point I was writing columns for my home-town paper, for a UK paper, and for one of the big Vancouver papers all at the same time. All of them different columns, by the way. I don’t get paid to blog, but it still fills the same need.
4. Writing is my most effective means of communication. I think this is something shared by many of us in these pages. Verbally, I’m pretty astute and fairly smooth. But, I’m sometimes prone to gaffes and stating something that will be taken entirely the wrong way. I’m especially adept at such – uh-oh, that didn’t come out right – moments with female partners or wives. If it is somebody I’m really emotionally involved with I’m even more verbal-blunder inclined, which can lead to: Guess who ain’t gonna get lucky tonight? With writing I can make a statement, and then I can ponder it, and then I can go back and change it, with no harm done. The reader will never see what was originally stated, and that’s just as well.

5. I love connecting with you all. It’s neat to build up these cyber relationships and it adds a whole other dimension to life. I haven’t ever met you – well, I have met a couple of you – but I feel a connectedness across the universe and I think that’s healthy and positive. I care about how you’re feeling and thinking, and I love it when people come to visit me and to make comments, verbal jousts, jokes and so forth. It’s like rilly-rilly cool!

At this point I am also going to follow Wolfgirl’s approach and say that if you choose to respond to this, you can also choose to be tagged – or not. There is utterly no obligation, but I’d love to see how some others respond to the primary question of ‘why you do this’ with 5 responses of their own.