Recently AAlgar sent me an email:
"Pretty nifty, but I'm forced to wonder: who is this for, exactly? You could tell me (and your other friends) this stuff in an e-mail. Anyone who's not your friend probably isn't interested in your job situation or what you think of movies. (They're not interested in online comics either, if that makes you feel better.)
"I just have to know what I've been wondering about for years now: for whom are these "web journals" intended? Now that I know someone with one, perhaps I can get an answer…"
Well, the simple answer is, this site is for me. It's a journal of my thoughts and experiences, and includes not only my thoughts, but also my reviews of stuff, and my creative writing and artwork. It's a record of what I thought about something, or what I was into at a certain point in time.
Why not just put it in a personal journal or diary then? Well… experience has shown that I don't keep up with something like that if no-one is watching. I think that getting into the habit of writing down my thoughts is probably a good thing, and making it public won't necessarily guarantee that I'll keep up with it, but it is encouraging.
Instead of email, as well, I can be sure that people can see pictures and artwork that I may add to my posts (HTML email is not such a sure thing), and there is automatically a permanent record of everything I've posted on the web, and it's searchable, so I can go back at any time, and say, Hey, what did I think of that film? I can't remember. So, in a way, this journal is a way to circumvent my faulty memory— to paraphrase Henry Jones, Sr.: I write it down so I don't have to remember.
Of course, I want my friends to come see it. I do send out a weekly email with the titles of every post I made the previous week. That way, they can see if it's anything they'd want to read, and come see it at their leisure. Of course, I'll hound them about it, to see if they've read any of it later. If I'm going to make it public, I want people to come and see what I did, and lavish me with praise for my wit and wisdom. Me, me, me, me, meeeee!
The last reason I have is that it's an experiment— a practice site of sorts. I'm planning on creating a rather large commercial website next year, and the current rebuilding of this site into something that's well designed and database-driven will help me learn the skills I need to make the commercial site a reality.
So, really, it's all about me and what I can get out of it. If someone else enjoys it, then great. Icing on the cake. 🙂