Why I started blogging

After toying with the idea for a while, wondering whether I had time for it, whether I'd have anything I'd like to write, whether I'd have anything people would like to read, whether I'd be disciplined enough to keep it up, whether people I know would think better or worse of me for it, I finally decided to start a blog.

There are a couple of reasons why I started blogging. In order of decreasing importance:

1. Writing means thinking. If there's something I need to think about, I find it a great help to write about it. It forces me to turn my thoughts from a messy pile of stuff into a coherent, logical whole. But even though I know this, it feels odd to write things that nobody will ever read, so a blog should help me out.
2. I like to write. Writing comes naturally to me. I just take a thought and put it on the screen, creating a coherent story out of it (or so I think) without much effort. Often when I work together with someone on a report, and we decide to split it up and each write half of it, I finish my part when the other person has just finished the second paragraph. Before I decided I wanted to become an astronaut (around the age of 10) I always wanted to be a writer. I still wouldn't mind. (But I'd also like to visit the moon some day!)
3. I want to practice writing. Even though I don't think I'm a bad writer, my writing can definitely be improved. Great bloggers have a very convincing style of writing, possessing the almost magical ability to implant their opinions into your head as if you'd never thought otherwise. This is a very useful skill, that I want to develop. The ability to get your point across clearly and convincingly is very handy in real-life conversations, too.
4. I want to share things with the world. You may have noticed that the first three reasons are all selfish ones. A desire to share things is not the main reason for me to blog. I write mostly for myself, and it doesn't really matter to me how many people read it or agree with me. But sometimes I think “hey, that's an interesting thought!” – you know, these kind of random things that suddenly hit you – and I don't want that thought to get lost. Or sometimes the thoughts are less random, and I really have an insight that I feel could be useful to someone else.

The title of this blog, “The Typethinker”, reflects the first reason above: typing as a way of thinking. I like the alliteration in “The Typethinker”, especially because T is the first letter of my name. I meant to call it “Writethink”, in proper Newspeak, but too many other things with that name or similar names exist. Also, “Writethink” or “The Writethinker” is a bit more awkward to pronounce, especially for non-native speakers like me. I like the Newspeak connotation though, because Newspeak was designed to do just the opposite of me: using language to prevent thought instead of facilitating it. With a Newspeak title, my blog would be rebellious! “The Typethinker” could still be Newspeak, but less obviously so.

I don't know where this blog is headed. Most successful blogs have a central theme. Most unsuccessful blogs also have a central theme, but it is something that nobody except a handful of people cares about: the blog's author him-/herself. The same is true for me at the moment, but as implied before, I don't care about becoming successful. For now I'll just type out whatever occurs to me. If I discover that there is some consistent recurring theme that I can keep writing about, I might focus my blogging on that. Only the future can tell.