600...Why?

So here's my 600th post. I don't generally do those 'why do I blog?' posts, but lately a few people have asked me exactly that.

Why?

Well, I don't necessarily have a good answer for it. Sometimes, I think it's a writing exercise. Other times, a way to stay in touch with family and friends. I know that some former in-laws save out pics of my kiddos that I post. And comments I get include some of that small but precious group of friends I have that date back to the birth of Lobsterism, back when I thought Reagan was going to draft me to send me off to Nicaragua.

It originally grew out of my wanting to learn a bit of web coding. I got a domain and everything, and then found myself wanting to do all these painful updates. Blogger makes it simple: it's all CSS based, and your most recent post defaults to the top. Exactly what I had in mind. I still have my domain: I use it to host the images I post here, and for my online portfolio and so on.

But more to the pointlessness of it, I blog because I have a deep seated inability to not express myself. I'm the guy who tells total strangers things about myself I should probably be concealing even from those who know me well. The Department of Too Much Information? I'm the district manager.

So given an open mic like this, what am I to do?

A coworker tried to explain to me how just being online at all was a risky deal. Because your privacy could be violated six ways to Sunday if you even put a modem on your computer. I kept asking, yeah, but who wants to know this stuff about me? And they'd do what with it?

I mean, it's not like my credit rating is something you'd want to steal. If you're going to commit identity theft, dig in deeper soil. Stealing my identity, you might not be able to con the record club out of those 13 CDs for a penny.

As far as other types of predators, I'm not sure who'd be trolling my blog for that. I mean, maybe they exist, but with millions of blogs created and abandoned, what kind of chances are we talking?

So anyways, here's my 600th post. When I started, I didn't even know what a blog was. When people ask me today, I still can't give a good answer.

If you love my blog, that's great. If you don't, I can't blame you.