Why Blog?

I just noticed that this is the 1,000th post on www.danablankenhorn.com since I left Corante a few years ago. (Picture from DeviantArt.)

It makes no money, and it is just one of several blogs I now produce, as a full-time journalist. These include:

• Voic.us, offering regular coverage of Southern politics through the eyes of bloggers in 10 different states.
• Open Source, produced for ZDNet, a blog I now share with Paula Rooney offering news and commentary on issues involving open source and Linux.
• ZDNet Healthcare, a blog which just went live this month, where I write about a range of Information Technology issues as they relate to doctors, hospitals, and the health care industry.

So what am I in it for? Some thoughts follow.

One thing I learned over the last several years is I’m something of a polymath. That is a fancy way of saying I know a lot about a wide range of things, and have a wide range of interests.

This is something I think distinguishes journalists as a group, something I noticed when I first when to the Medill School at Northwestern, some 30 years ago in June, and something I notice each time I see other Medill-does. (That’s what we’re called. Hey the school mascot is a kitty cat.) We’re incredibly curious, about a lot of different things. It’s something you need as a journalist, because you’re constantly being thrown new stories on new subjects and have to get up-to-speed quickly or drown.

In fact, I’d say polymathism is something of a job requirement for a working journalist. The idea of an incurious journalist, or one who is only in it for money, absolutely appalls me. There are many, many easier ways to make a living.

Not that I’ve always made a living. While at one point in the 1990s I was a six-figure man, with up to 17 different columns, blogs, and writing accounts to my name, my figure fell to zero (that’s right, nothing) during 2001 and 2002. I’m now making about what a beginning trash collector makes, kept whole only by the fact that my wife has actual talent and is now in her peak earning years.

During the 1990s I joked "I’d do this for nothing" but in the next decade it literally became true. And I had to confront the fact that I am compelled, literally compelled, to read and write, to speak my mind, to do what little I can to understand my times and push history along, perhaps a tiny, tiny bit, in the right direction, with my words.

Words are my music. I type fast, thanks to my late father, who gave me a portable typewriter and a record called "How to Learn to Type in One Hour" when I was 8 and suffering from bad grades at handwriting. (My handwriting still sucks.) I didn’t know you can’t learn to type in an hour from a record, so I did it. Other people can play the piano or wield a scalpel or hit a baseball — I can type.

So I type. I read, and I learn, and I write, and hopefully I can teach some people a few things. Here I can write about whatever interests me — politics, the environment, futurism, technology, even fiction when I have a hankering to. (And I had a hankering to until I noticed this was my 1,000th post.)

What I live for, of course, is you. You, the person reading this. You, the person who might comment on it. You, who might tell me I’m full of beans, or give me an attaboy once in a while.

It’s not a great living, but it’s a life of high awareness. It has sometimes paid the bills, and given me the honor of a wife and two young people who are, I have learned, the real reasons for me to keep on living.

So, God bless you all, and I’ll see you on the next page.