Why Write a Blog -- why write anything at all?

     My official view count on blogspot recently exceeded 20,000 views. I am fairly certain that this is a low number. There are places where I post my blog that make their own copy and, thus, the official counter is not incremented. Twenty thousand is not really that amazing. There are people who are better well known, who work much harder at getting their blogs visible, who blog in association with a company or technology, and others in different circumstances who have view counts that make mine insignificant. But, it is significant to me.
     This total of 20,000 views is from a long history. I have been working on this set of blogs for almost 11 years and have written 115 blogs. They total around 100,000 words -- which is about the same as a couple of moderate-sized novels. A guesstimate is that it has taken about 450 hours or 11 full-time workweeks (or an average of one 40-hour week per year).
     Why put in this amount of effort? I have occasionally joked -- sometimes more than half seriously -- that I write because I am a masochist. I have gaps of weeks to a month or so when I just cannot get myself to go back to the keyboard. There are often few, or no, comments -- "what is the sound made by one hand clapping?". In some social media, it is not uncommon for people only to comment, or downvote, if they don't like it -- and generate only silence if they like it or are OK with it.
     I have even had one moderator of a social media site insist that blogs were the same as spam. Upon suggesting that she, or he, read it -- they, in proud fashion, insisted that "they didn't read spam". The reality that their arguments would apply equally to any posted article (Computerworld, Newsweek, Time, Washington Post, ...) made no impact on their worldview.
     The question as to "why bother" applies to most writers. The statistics of  about 10 years ago were that 90% of all writers do not, or cannot, make a living at writing. I suspect that the statistics have not changed much -- possibly it has even gotten worse as there are many more "markets" where a person can publicly write for free. I am sure that there do exist blog writers who make a living -- maybe in the same general percentage as other writers. Personally, I would have loved to have made reasonable money from my blogs -- but I haven't.
     When I wrote, and had published, my three technical books, I earned back my royalty advances which placed me in the top 20% of all non-fiction writers; I didn't earn very much past those advances. I may have earned a dollar an hour for those books (they are all long out of print). My initial fiction book has earned closer to a nickel an hour -- though I always have hopes that the right person will read it and it will take the world by storm (it has been well reviewed). I think that writers, in general, have to have an optimistic core or they just wouldn't write.
     So far, this blog has listed lots of reasons NOT to write. Don't expect (you are allowed to hope) to earn money writing. You are more likely to hear complaints than compliments. You may even have to justify your very existence in your writing.
     So, why write? I have been in the paid workforce for about 47 years -- working in the computer science arena for 40. During that period of time, I have read thousands of books, worked on hundreds of projects, interacted with thousands of people, worked in dozens of different roles and even in a dozen different fields (donut baker, programmer, wheat field tractor driver, company startup co-founder, small item construction field worker, manager, ...)
     In this, I am certainly not unique. There are many of you out there who have had as many experiences and some who have had more experiences or experiences that may be of more popular interest. A lot of you are like me -- wanting to share back with the community from which we learned and have gotten so much.
     But, I like to write and am pretty good with the written word. So, as I fill up with experiences I want to share them -- and I can best share them via the written word. So, I write. And, among other methods of publishing, I blog.