2015-01-30

To Blog, or Not to Blog

Whole two months have passed since I posted my last blog entry. This is the longest break between any two entries, including breaks during my trips abroad. I've been wondering whether to continue to blog, or not to blog, as I seem to have lost my initial motivation to do so, and the main platform for sharing one's daily thoughts online seems to have shifted from blogs to social networks since I started blogging more than 14 years ago on another website (the archive of this second generation of this blog is only since five years ago). Blogging was a way to share what I considered bothering in Japanese society, where I spent the first four years as a blogger, in order to warn possible foreign students of Japanese.

Since I moved to Israel in August 2004, I've seen myself blogging - mostly kvetching - naturally, more and more on Israeli society, until I've stopped writing on Japanese society except on my annual trips there. Having written on Israeli society for more than a decade, I feel I've exhausted all the major issues that interest me for better or for worse in this society and people who live here, so I feel I can only repeat writing on the same topics, though probably from slightly different perspectives.

So what kind of motivation do I still have to continue to blog? I'm not so sure. I wonder what motives other bloggers who write on the society where they live or on their private life there. The only thing that seems to justify my contining to blog, though probably less frequently, is that this helps me reflect on the society and my inner self on a regular basis and verbalize these reflections. During this two-month break I thought of making this blog personal by limiting an access to it to myself. But I also thought that the awareness, and not necessarily the fact, that my blog-shmog may also be read by someone somewhere might be able to help me formulate my thoughs and feelings more clearly and accurately. Another benefit of keeping a publicly accessible blog is to have been able to get acquainted with a number of interesting people who stumbled upon this blog.