The only way I use social media is by blogging. I do check out a couple of people who scavenge the internet for pertinent news articles. Since it’s difficult to do the work myself, it’s nice to have someone else find the kernels of truth (or maybe the grains of wisdom) in that teeming chaos. But for what I myself post online? It’s this blog.
For the past nineteen years, this blog has been there for me when I needed an outlet, whether it was to talk about the writing process, promote authors, discuss books I’ve read, help me find a way forward during my years of grief (and coincidentally helping others as I helped myself), tell about my experiences as a first time home owner, showcase my garden, or express gratitude for my life even while my body is slowly declining into old age.
I’ve seldom considered why people read this blog (or why they don’t when they don’t). Sometimes I know, though, especially when people come to read my grief articles to find out that they’re not alone or to find out why they are going through what they are going through. Others use this blog as a way to keep track of me, not in a creepy stalker sort of way, but as a concerned friend. All too often, we let life separate us from our friends, and so this blog shows them that I’m still around and doing okay. But for the rest? Their reasons for reading belong to them, and really have no part in why I write.
Today I found a comment on an article I wrote back in February about my current run of daily blogging, where the commenter asked if blogging every day makes us confuse quality with quantity, and if it’s narcissistic to think that people want to read every day what one writes.
For the most part, I don’t write for others. I write for myself, and anyone who wants to can come along for the ride, so I responded: I suppose one has to ask if the blogger cares what people think of their blog. Sometimes it’s for the bloggers — keeping to a discipline, clarifying their ideas, telling their truth to a (perhaps) uncaring world.
And their rebuttal: Well, when you publish something it’s for a public. If you need an exercise for your discipline keep it to yourself and don’t publish it.
I don’t understand the point of this exchange. People always write for themselves. Even if the writing is published, it’s still for themselves. If bloggers didn’t get anything from writing, published or not, they wouldn’t do it. And just because bloggers publish their articles, no one has to read them. In my case, it’s not as if I’m chaining readers to my computer.
Do I want to be heard? Of course I do. Although I say I write for myself, I consider blogging to be a form of communication, a longer way than simply posting a comment on some other social site or sharing someone else’s commentary. And communication, even in such a sideways fashion as this, is important to one who spends most of her waking hours alone. Do I consider this blog to be narcissistic? Since it’s centered on me and my life (who else do I know well enough to write about?), I suppose it could be considered narcissistic, but then everyone who writes would by definition be narcissistic. And even if it is narcissistic, who cares? If what I write doesn’t resonate with anyone, they simply stay away. At least I’m not heaping more outrage on an already outraged world, not spewing hatred or trying to make anyone believe what I want them to believe. More than anything, it seems as if I show appreciation for whatever the day brings.
As for quality vs quantity, again, what difference does it make? I sometimes have interesting ideas. Sometimes I’m just letting a piece of my day slip out into the open. And always, I write to the best of my ability, proofreading until the piece is as well written as possible. (This is also part of the discipline factor, something I would not do if I were simply jotting entries into a for-me-only journal).
I might be getting away from the blog prompt of how I use social media and getting into the why of it, but it still comes down to the same thing: the only way I use social media is by blogging.
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Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One.
Bertram's Blog 
April 16, 2026 at 9:54 am
headed out tp Dr. office post surgery . hope the bandages can come off. maybe even the stitches. This all is kind of a nuisance.
April 16, 2026 at 2:17 pm
I can imagine. Hope all goes well!
April 17, 2026 at 7:31 am
Thanks! Not so lucky another 2 weeks with this stiffness and I keep exercising my wrist.
April 17, 2026 at 7:50 am
Take care of yourself!
April 17, 2026 at 7:54 am
I have to. Noone else will. Thanks
April 17, 2026 at 5:16 am
For the years you wrote your grief blog I read every one of them and usually felt validated. Your words on the page helped me find my words in my own private journals. I found a place to begin to make sense of my thoughts and feelings because I had yours as a model. My own writing became a pressure valve release from which I surely benefited. Thankyou
April 17, 2026 at 6:30 am
That was such a confusing time in both of our lives. I expected the sadness and the pain, but all the rest that came along with it was shocking and confusing. Thank you for reading what I wrote. It made that time seem less lonely.
April 20, 2026 at 5:17 am
If you don’t write for others why should I read you?
As an editor I meet a lot of writers who think of themselves that the don’t write for others. Then they shouldn’t publish. Everything you publish is for a readership. In my courses for creative writing I meet a lot of young writers thinking they write for themselves. Then they shouldn’t become writers. The first law of writing is to understand that writing is a service you provide for others. If you don’t write with a public in your mind then your writing isn’t worth publishing. It’s for a personal diary.
Kb 🙂
April 20, 2026 at 6:42 am
And yet, here you are . . .
April 20, 2026 at 6:43 am
Of course, as I write for others.
April 21, 2026 at 12:12 pm
Writing for oneself to clarify thoughts, or simply to reflect on the day isn’t necessarily writing for others. Publishing doesn’t automatically negate that. It does add the side benefit of communicating with others and maybe even starting a conversation. Keeping oneself out there in this more reclusive online world. From my cheap seat I would think that as a long-time author, you have both natural and learned skills which make expressing yourself second nature. That you can truly just write for yourself and publish without requiring conscious consideration as to the words used in case others, who choose to do so, read them.
The grief blogs you wrote to express your pain helped many of us put words to emotions outside of daily life that we don’t have the skill to express. They definitely helped me to put words to my own pain and find my footing in this new reality, for which I could never thank you enough.
April 21, 2026 at 12:52 pm
Yes! Exactly the point I was trying to make. Thank you for the clarification. That’s been my aim from the beginning — to write what I need to write and to be grateful that sometimes it’s what people need to hear. The conversations started on this blog often reach into the real world (as you well know!), but whether I publish or not doesn’t negate the value of starting out writing for myself and publishing my work and letting others take from it what they want.
May 6, 2026 at 6:39 am
We feel a compulsion to write it down. Perhaps it’s cathartic? I like to look at what I was doing a year ago, or ten years ago. It in my case fifty one years ago as I started keeping a daily diary when I was 13. And yes, every day became the habit. Not a lot. Using a Five-Year Diary is like writing yourself a postcard. And like you, I feel I am writing for myself.
May 6, 2026 at 7:12 am
It’s definitely cathartic, and even though we write for ourselves, it’s still nice when someone reads and connects with something we say.
I’m impressed — a diary since you were 13! I often received diaries when I was young, but I barely managed an entry or two before I gave up. Of course, I had nothing to say, and didn’t know back then how to write something about nothing as I do now, but still . . . all those unused diaries. What a waste!
Congratulations on being the diary champion!