Compelling Article: "Why I Blog"

I am working my way through a pile of magazines that has accumulated unread over the past couple months and I picked up an old issue of Atlantic Monthly. Well I guess it's just called The Atlantic now, but I prefer its former title. In its November 2008 issue, Andrew Sullivan, among the first recognized journalists to embrace blogging, discusses the medium in his aptly titled article, Why I Blog.

My favorite parts of the article are when he discusses the immediacy of blogging--the urgency with which bloggers blog--and the reader-writer intimacy that results:

"Even the most careful and self-aware blogger will reveal more about himself than he wants to in a few unguarded sentences and publish them before he has the sense to hit Delete. The wise panic that can paralyze a writer—the fear that he will be exposed, undone, humiliated—is not available to a blogger. You can’t have blogger’s block. You have to express yourself now, while your emotions roil, while your temper flares, while your humor lasts. You can try to hide yourself from real scrutiny, and the exposure it demands, but it’s hard. And that’s what makes blogging as a form stand out: it is rich in personality."

Since starting this blog in February, I have often felt the overwhelming need to post after reading something interesting about the MBA world or hearing something I thought readers might care about. I have also had the desire to share more of myself than I thought was permissible in an anonymous blog. And I do feel strangely connected to you, dear reader, even though we will likely never meet.