Why Do I Write?
I suspect all people who write anything down for a purpose that is not related to work or bare survival come across this question sooner or later. I know I did and, while I don't have a definitive answer as of now, I do know that the answer changed over time. I have always enjoyed writing of sorts. Deep down I've had the fantasy of being an actual writer for a very long time now. You know, the romantic version of this dream, the one without the precarious circumstances, the writer's block, the unemployment, the difficulty to make a living, the existential angst. Just me writing compelling thoughts and amazing stories to my heart's content. Of course that would necessitate actually coming up with something worth writing, devising a story, thinking up characters or so.
If you happen to know more about this than I do (which I deem not unlikely), you may have realized that I don't actually have a good idea what that life looks like. That's fine, I don't need to.
Looking back at my life up to this point, I have written things in situations of strong emotions. When I was in love (unhappily, of course), depressed, disillusioned or terrified. I do have a diary of sorts that only has a couple entries, all of them years apart, that documents some of the worst moments I've had. Of course there are many more that go unmentioned and will, hopefully, be forgotten in time.
And then I started using Mastodon. My first instance was Fosstodon where, it seemed to me, every single person had their own website which would most of the time be a blog, at least in part. For some reason this appealed to me. Maybe it was the autonomy, maybe it was the technological challenge because I had never done anything in the way of web development or hosting, maybe it was a combination thereof with a side of something more profound that remained hidden to my conscious self.
And so I started this blog. It went through a small amount of change but, by and large, it has remained the same for all this time. I used my own website to land a job as it demonstrated my skills in maintaining my own website which seems quaint to me now but it served its purpose. But I kept on writing. Mostly about technology, Linux, privacy, things close to my heart but still at arm's length. Anyone can write a "How To: Rip a BluRay on Linux" post and, in fact, many people have but I still did it, for myself and, possibly, for others. I've used my own blog posts as a reference later on when I had forgotten the process of a particular task which is one of the main reasons I write any of that stuff in the first place. But as time went on that didn't seem enough anymore.
I always liked writing about my exploits in self-hosting, my server setup, my programming projects (such as they are or have ever been) but it's not what I really wanted. I came to realize that what I most wished for was companionship. To be one of the guys, to be recognized, to exchange thoughts and ideas, to help others along, if I can and they need it. More and more I come to the conclusion that I am really doing this to fight my ongoing struggle with loneliness. I suppose that is the biggest reason why I started with website analytics and record how many people come to this site and read my stuff. Or, more accurately: I started out of curiosity but this is probably why I still keep the analytics. I have one post that gets a disproportionate amount of traffic which concerns an incredibly niche topic and is quite comprehensive. I have spent many hours working on it and still keep updating it. I like to think it has helped a decent amount of people doing something they love, the same as me. But what really gets me excited is when somebody reaches out and asks for help, offers advice or just comments on something I wrote. It does not happen a lot but it does happen. These are the times when I feel like all of this actually means something.