In Defense of the Diary

Not long after I started this blog, I glanced through a book in B&N called No One Cares What You Had For Lunch, a book of prompts and ideas for blog entries that people will presumably care about. I didn't find the book itself particularly interesting, but its message was clear, and I've more or less stuck to it. I enjoy writing entries for this blog because I give them some thought, and I tend to regard this blog as superior to my Livejournal and its confessional mundanity. All this to say that I know, or at least suspect, there's some snobbery in the blogosphere regarding such "day in the life" online journals. However, as summer vacation really sets in and I start my annual campaign of letters and emails, I notice that they all tend to have a paragraph or two in common. There are, in fact, a handful of people who do care what I had for lunch (or who have kindly humored me for years), and there is a better way to let them know than wearing my hand out writing it six or seven times; namely, my online journal, which I can write once for the whole handful to read. It serves its own purpose, quite distinct from this blog (whose purpose I'm not clear on, but that's for another post). So enough of this arrogance among authors of "real" blogs. You're comparing apples and oranges.