The old grey donkey, Eeyore stood by himself in a thistly corner of the Forest, his front feet well apart, his head on one side, and thought about things. Sometimes he thought sadly to himself, “Why?” and sometimes he thought, “Wherefore?” and sometimes he thought, “Inasmuch as which?” and sometimes he didn’t quite know what he was thinking about.  — A. A. Milne

I’m most decidedly not an Eeyore, but blogging can carry its own kind of angst. I’ve learned to be pretty ok with what I put out here. I basically know what I can’t do, what doesn’t feel authentic, what isn’t ‘me.’ While I like to see the hit counter go up, that’s not what motivates me, because I’m not out to rope in new readers just for the sake of more eyes reading this. I don’t have the mod gushy, glossy lingo that lots of bloggers do, and I don’t care. It feels good not to have to prove anything. I don’t post pictures even though all the good bloggers do, because in this visual era, I like the challenge of trying to make words work for me.

There’s a lot of things I could write, but choose not to, because while I don’t have much (!) to hide, I value modesty, discretion, and mystery. I can keep secrets. I take joy in living a wonderful moment and savoring it in real time with real people without compulsively sharing it with the world.

I think it’s true that the blogging world has a gazillion narcissists (that’s a funny word to spell) and I don’t think that I blog just to talk to myself about myself, but neither am I looking for lots of dialogue and Q&A. I don’t ask readers for feedback, because I figure they’ll let me know if they care enough to say something. Although I really do love comments, even negative ones. Maybe someday I’ll want more interaction, but not now–even though my book needs publicity–because I don’t have the energy  to be an MC on a virtual stage.

But in describing my blog and its goals, it’s not fair or accurate to define it by what it’s NOT, and for a long time I didn’t know how to  verbalize what this blog IS. Finally, yesterday, I think I found it. It was when I was reading Mere Orthodoxy which referred me to Trevin Wax’s post about curiosity in a blogger that the penny dropped, and I said “Hey, that’s me! That’s why I blog–because I’m curious.”

I’ve seen some things, and heard a lot of stories, but I like to think that I’m not jaded, and that I still can be easily surprised, and that I won’t lose a sense of wonder about whatever’s around me. I want to keep asking why, and wherefore, and whither to.

I’m a pilgrim on a narrow road, with nothing to prove about myself, but now and then the exhort-er in me wants to say “Hey–look what I found! I wonder why–” to  other pilgrims. And I think that’s why I blog.