What's the point of blogging?

Really, what is the point? Isn't that up to each individual blogger to decide for themselves? Is it like ... this is the point, and that's why we all do it, and if you don't get that right then you're missing the point? Some guy who doesn't like me (and doesn't know me) assumes I can't be happy with my blog because it doesn't have very many comments. (Is it supposed to have a lot of comments when I haven't even had it two months? I figured it would take a little time.) Isn't that a ... narrow way to look at it?

Personally I feel like this is for my own enjoyment more than anything else. Yesterday's entry is a good example. The one about the turtles, I mean. :-) I could have just as well done that on paper, in a photo album - printed the pictures, pasted them in some album and written my comments alongside them on the page. And then kept that album just for myself to look at. To be honest that would probably have had almost exactly the same effect as doing it here. :-) But I did it here, online, because it's much simpler and rather more accessible. And then it does have the added advantage that on the chance that someone else should be interested (say for instance Anne Ida ;-), it's easily available to them too.

But does it really have to be a prerequisite that someone else is interested? I rather assume that they aren't. But I enjoy having this blog regardless. I think that for my own sake it will be rewarding to have it, just for me. For instance, I hope I still have it, say, five years from now. Because in some ways, my memory isn't the greatest. :-) But having this, I can go back and look at entries filed under June 2008 and see that Oh look, that Saturday in June five years ago Anne Ida was here and we took the turtles out ... and Raphael peed on my arm when we tried to take his picture, I remember now! :-D Because to be honest I wouldn't expect to remember a detail like that without something to jog my memory. But this is such a great way to gather memories like that. To gather things I want to remember. Like this:

I was surfing around the net earlier and I found a great picture - this one. I wanted to post it here, but for some reason I can't manage it. It seems to be stored to my computer alright, but when I look at it there's nothing there, just a blank. So I'll just have to use the link. What a great shot. I can't remember ever seeing a picture before of a water turtle in the wild that's still soft. So cool to get to see that. If that is in fact what I'm seeing - the baby, or should I say juvenile, seems surprisingly big (and algae-encrusted) to still be soft. But I don't really know. It's a wonderful shot, either way. But it's not an RES though. No way. The post says two different things - RES in the post itself and painted in the title, and it's definitely painted that's correct. The baby is a painted turtle, I mean. (The adult is an RES, or some closely related species.) I love this picture. Look at those hind feet. Amazing. :-)

Something like that is soo worth keeping, to me. But I didn't quite know how to keep track of these things, before. Not in a way that worked. This is the perfect way, though. It's wonderful. If someone else likes it too, that's great ... but it really is first and foremost and more than anything just for me. :-)