Petit à petit, Yuan fait son nid.

 Lesson 2: Why we blog today ?

   Another female blogger closed her blog lately. I went to her place and found she already deleted all her articles. It was empty and I felt sad.

    Jose asked me “Do you know why she did that and how do you feel about it?”

    I said “I don’t know really, but I might guess.”

    “I knew her and I even met her before. She had started to make a blog in 2006 and since then thousands of people became her followers. But for some technical reason, the blog platform could not work for about 6 months and she had to move to another website. I thought she was ok to open a new blog, but it seems that most of her followers forgot her totally.

Yes, we keep saying that we don’t care whether our readers will remain with us or not. But in fact we do care, otherwise why would we publish?

Then it comes to an interesting question “Nowadays, why would we blog?”

In fact, I felt that she was just like a mirror for me. God knows how much time, how much efforts we gave for our blogs.

There was a period when the first thing I did when I got up was to go to my laptop directly to check how many people visited my website on the previous day. I was very happy to see that there were some messages left by the visitors, and I could feel really down if there were no messages.

      I think the same thing happened to that other blogger lately. But finally she might have felt that it was stupid to keep doing it, then she closed it, that is it.”

    “Yes, tell me, how do you feel?” Jose smiled, “You kept talking about her, but now, I want to know how you feel?”

    “I feel… ehh… I feel I am doing a unpaid job also.”  I am a little bit down.

    “But you are paid by the contempt you get from creating, right? It’s more important than money.” Jose explained to me.

    Then he said “Ok, let’s come to the question you had before.” “Why do you blog?” Well, at first, Yuan, you should realize that you are an artist, you might feel awkward when I say that. But it is true and you should get to terms with it. You find the music, the pictures, and you also write your very own words, all of which is very creative. By doing that, you offer an artwork which is carrying your emotions to the readers. It is quite nice. And it is a truly creative work which you can not deny.”

“But,” Jose said in a mild but strong voice,” You should also understand clearly that once your art has been born, it doesn’t belong to you anymore and the people will take it for granted. You should not have any expectations from them.

People have different feelings towards your work and it all depends on their own emotional potential. Some might feel very touched; some not. Some will feel that they like you; some not. How can you control them? You can only control yourself but you cannot control the others. Never!

This is a golden rule, Yuan, remember, you should do it for yourself and only do it for yourself.”

    There was a moment of silence. What he said was so cool, even cold, but so true… and it answers all.