and she said.. "how you interpret the dream is probably more important than the dream itself"

It's amazing to me that people out there are not only thinking up but executing and following through with things like Blogshares and BlogTree. People who have jobs and need to get normal things done (like eat, sleep, and make money) are out there making our lives more interesting - and for little more than self-satisfaction and maybe a little recognition.

Okay, sure, Rob Malda is pretty famous by this point for creating Slashdot - argueably one of the original "weblogs". But I don't think the dude is making a truckload of money or anything like that.

And yet people continue with things like the busblog out of what can only be described as the desire to create and express. The upshoot? I have something to read during my marathon bouts of coding and coffee consumption. But why do they do it? What is it that drives them? Is it the sitemeter? The praise? The popularity? The exposure?

Sort of, but I doubt it. It's like most things - there are few that are atop the pile and many many more at the bottom. It's nice to get a comment or two after a post (hint hint) whether it be praise for flowery prose or agreement of opinion or even a rebuke of one's assertions because then you know someone is reading. You know you have an audience. But that isn't all of it. If it was many fewer people would start blogs (since one rarely ever has an audience when they first start one) or continue them through the early dark days of their micro-publication.

What it is about is expression and exchange. Maybe your blog operates as a sort of journal to yourself, a collection box for your thoughts, at the onset.. but as you get a hit or two and people start to come back you have a mini-office of propaganda. You have a voice. All of a sudden you are not just the drunk guy in the corner booth railing at the government and complaining about the weather. Online, with visitors - with Google share - you have a mini-soapbox and a mini-market all within a micro-publication.

And so what if it's only two people? (hi Mom, hi Dad) It's expression and exchange of ideas (the exchange part is fostered through comments - hint hint) and expression is what makes us humans an interesting breed.

Without expression and creation and art we are just another monkey in another tree peeling another banana.

If I was doing this for money, I would be peeling a banana - but I'm not. I'm not doing this for anything concrete or particularly obvious. I am stretching my mind like a pizza-pie - tossing it high into the air. I am excercising my right to be a human and be different and be expressive.

I'm carving my thoughts into the cave wall.

And I like it.