When I first sat at an empty Blogger dashboard years ago, I had no idea I would post 400 entries, 300 on a personal blog and the remainder over a lot of come-and-go blogs.

Now that I'm looking back, I can see a few reasons (conveniently, ten) why I wrote. They are:

10. Personal creativity. I love to create and design things: games, systems, articles, paintings, virtual items, and more. I like to react to the world, resonate with whatever crosses my path and reflect my perceptions back into the world.

9. Preservation of memories. When I've had good and bad things enter my life, I've wanted to preserve them, to look at later on, when I can no longer do those things, or am finally safe from them.

8. Recognition. My Second Life blog has helped to promote my ventures in-world.

7. Income. I'd like to say that, before HubPages, I was making a living as a blogger. I can't; I had a brief fling with $700 in cable TV commissions, and AdSense is finally paying out after 3 years and $417 in AdWords, but up until yesterday writing for pay has been an excruciating failure. I have always tried to earn from writing, anyway.

6. Curiosity. I wonder what other people think about hot-button issues, so I'm likely at times to put out a trial balloon and see if people shoot it, make a balloon animal with it, or just suck the air out of it with joylessness.

5. Venting. I like digging a hole online sometimes, dropping all my bitterness, frustrations, and simmering rage into a paragraph or two, and closing it up so no one ever reads it. Then I feel better for about a week or two. My main blog is not visible and only one person reads it regularly.

4. Praise of others and their accomplishments. When I see a contribution to the world that isn't being noticed I like to pass it on to a community or those who can reward or recognize it.

3. Correspondence and community. It's horizon-expanding to hear from other people from different parts of the nation and world, and see what their lives are like. Even if it's a comment that doesn't agree with my views, it's an eye-opener to be reminded there is a different way of looking at or even doing something.

2. Misplaced work ethic. It may be number 2, but it's not a good one. When I was working on a computer project, my boss used to tell me to eBay, then not eBay things, hold off on web design till she was situated, etc. etc. Subconsciously I still wanted to have a tangible result while waiting for another self-cancelling pair of commands, so I would drop the project I was waiting to hear about and crank out an article.

1. (Tie) Humor and career goals. I want to write for a living if I can. Everything else was a failure. I worked at a bank but I lost interest. When I worked as a drug dealer I did everything by the book. As a bookie I was a sure bet. They fired me at the eyeglass shop for losing focus. My stint as a chiropractor's assistant left me all out of joint. They didn't like my blind devotion at the window shop. I kept leaving the boomerang factory, then coming back. I didn't last at my Alaskan PHP job because I was tired of being left out in the code. The refrigeration company called me a hothead, PETA called me a meathead, the whale watch company said I was a loose cannon, the comedy club said I was a joke, and eBay called me a sellout.

Really, what else can I do? :D