Is A Blog A Dialogue?

I have visited this site many times in the nearly seven months since I last posted and feel guilty because I think there’s a good idea somewhere, but I still have no clue what the point of this blog is. Is it more about my own memories and leveraging the familial memories of my older relatives, or is it more a general, albeit non-scientific, look at how memory works, what causes something to be remembered, and the ways in which collective recollections work among groups of people, societies, and so forth?

In other words, is this blog a dialogue, or am I just talking to myself, and if I am, does it really matter? So what if this ends up being yet another navel-gazing piece of crap, something that should have remained safely ensconced in a Moleskine journal or a Mead three-holer, rather than committed to cyberspace for generations to ridicule, neglect, or misrepresent?

(Of course, I bring up three conditions most would construe to be negative. I strive for optimism, but I am the daughter of a man who says, when asked whether the glass is half-full or half-empty, “What fucking glass?”)

I guess I won’t know until I write a bit more. And I can’t expect my anticipated audience to visit or become involved unless I provide something with which to interact.

My brother has a successful blog that was recently picked up by the Los Angeles Times called Dodger Thoughts. He gets hundreds of comments daily, and I am incredibly proud of him.

Here is his third post, from July 23, 2002 (yes, he started his blog years before people were discussing SEO and keywords and even added value, at least in a blog context):

Having now written that unsolicited ramble, I now confront the question of: Why? Why am I doing this, and who am I doing this for?

My best answers are, for no good reason, and for no one in particular.

Whatever I write here will be with the assumption that the audience might only be one person – me. Admittedly, writing for one’s self on the Web is not unlike talking to yourself in a public place – but though I try to avoid doing that, it’s not like I haven’t done that. There are probably worse things.

And I figure, occasionally, someone else might read this. My brother or sister. An indulgent friend. I don’t know – someone. I’m not sure it matters.

And I guess I enjoy the idea of writing about baseball enough that I’m going to try not to worry about the audience thing too much.

But if there’s one thing I do want to make sure you all know, it’s that I’m not so delusional that I’m thinking big about this site. I’m thinking small. Very small. Just something to have fun with for the time being.

I’m trying to keep his thoughts in mind. The royal “We” will see whether I can ever get comfortable with this, whether it matters even to me, and whether this is not a case of deja vu, which for me has mostly translated to, “Why bother?”