I avoid highly-personal posts and family pictures too. I know some of my friends would probably find that more interesting than the other stuff I post, but honestly, I don’t feel comfortable putting a lot of personal information out on the web.

In my opinion most blogging, including my own is often an exercise in vanity. Yes, we can justify our blogs–they are a resource, they are a witnessing tool, they provide a creative outlet for expression, they provide online discussion and create virtual communities.

But they also scream, “Hey, hey, look at me. Look what I have to say. Look how self-important I feel, look at how smart I am.” And any blogger who is guilty of watching the stat counter and analyzing traffic to his or her blog is surely guilty of this on some level.

Blogging brings the misguided notion that we have an obligation to publish frequently, sometimes anything. Sometimes drivel. What most of us don’t want to admit is that the large majority of society doesn’t look at blogs (this is hard to imagine because WE do look at them), and the world would not stop if we closed our blogs.

“Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity.” (Eccl 1:2 KJV)

Surely I can’t be the only person who feels this way. I’ve tried to do a number of things. First to avoid the stat counter so much. What’s my current number of hits? I don’t know, and I took the actual numbered counter off my blog although the link is still there for data capture. Second, I no longer post entries that begin with “Sorry I haven’t posted in a while, but I’ve been so busy doing such and such.” Third, I try to post less personal information because I can’t imagine the world at large cares. Fourth, I occasionally contemplate closing the whole thing down. The world could certainly get by without my blog. Could I?