I’ve discovered that writing a blog may not reach the world with my ideas, but it does do one thing: it keeps me writing. And as a writer, that’s important.

Blogging is a wonderful distraction from my creative writing which takes up most of my time. For me, creative writing takes a chunk of uninterrupted time, away from the house, away from the world, alone in my thoughts. But blog writing can be done anywhere at any time. I can be sitting in a restaurant with music blaring and I can write a blog. If I was writing creatively, the music would drive me crazy, and I would keep giving the waiters evil stares when a mind-numbing pop song would jolt on, interrupting my writing mojo. But blog writing, ahhhh, it’s relaxed. It’s ten minutes here and ten minutes there. Save draft. Get back to it later. No pressure. No deadlines. No plans. It works according to my schedule and not vice-versa.

Blogging also allows me to explore anything at all. That’s what I particularly like about my blog. I’ll write about everything. Whatever pops into my mind. Yesterday, I had beef on my mind so I wrote about beef rendang. The day before that I was writing about writing over break. Today, I’m writing about blogging.

Riveting. I know.

But I’ve written about history, drama, theatre, movie reviews, politics, travel, culture, religion, books, writing, and anything else I want.

The point being that if I want to write about these topics, it requires me to write. And as a writer, that’s what I consistently need to do: think about new topics, discuss experiences, look at what’s going on in my life, think about what’s coming next, and just processing life as it happens. All of these are essential aspects of being a writer. A diverse interest list will only help the creativity when the writer finds himself back in front of the keyboard ready to tackle the next topic.

So that’s my take on blogging. It’s good for the person. It’s good for the writer.