Why blog about your personal life?

Every now and then I’ll meet someone who asks me “why do you share so much about your personal life online?”

(Sometimes I meet people who make fun of me, but that’s a different story.)

Why?

Aside from the fact that I like sharing it, I also like hearing how it makes people feel.

I got a note from Jacob the other day, saying he was unsubscribing from this blog.

I didn’t recognize his name and thought that, perhaps, as is sometimes the case, he was a business associate looking for the Never Stop Marketing blog and, accidentally, had chosen the wrong blog.

“No,” he wrote, “I subscribed back when I was first diagnosed with thyroid cancer and was reading about your experiences. I enjoyed your blog and reading about your family and your other musings. It’s just gotten to the point where I can’t keep up with all the other blogs I read.”

So, for 2.5 years, this random guy decided that the stuff I was sharing was of interest to him.

In some ways, though the comparison is probably not apt, I suspect this is what artists look for.

Affect people you’ve never met through your work.