I inhabit the fifth decade of my marriage, the fourth decade of my law practice, my first decade as a blogger and the first year in which my spouse has begun to blog, here at Daily Kos, too. In the shadow of these facts, I have begun to ask myself, for the first time, why do I blog? I'm not sure how much I like the answer I'm coming up with, what I call the narcissism of authorship.
I've been litigating cases in state and federal courts and administrative tribunals since 1977. This involves three kinds of performance: learning, speaking and writing. If you do the learning and writing right, you have to do less speaking. What that means is that I have spent a lifetime studying and investigating facts and law and then writing pleadings, briefs and presentations of evidence and trying cases to juries and judges. In the beginning there was dictation and carbon paper, then memory typewriters and photo copiers, then word processors, then desktop workstations, pcs, laptops, smart phones, etc. For many recent years my day, if not in court, has been spent banging at a keyboard, killing the trees that I must in order to sustain the life I have chosen.
So it isn't really intuitive that one of my main hobbies would involve banging on a keyboard some more once I reach the end of my ridiculous commute to the suburbs. So why do I do it?
It's the narcissism of authorship. All the professional writing that I do or have done in my work rarely has an intended audience of more than nine, and usually it is just one. In my work, my writing is read, and judged, by judges, or, sometimes juries. The outcome is typically win or lose, but most often comes long after the work is completed. Delayed gratification is the very essence of a litigation practice.
Blogging is totally different, so different that it is irresistible. The audience for each of my diaries or comments is variable, but almost always larger than in my professional life. Some of my most random passing thoughts have received 100 or more views. One piece topped 3000. But it's not just the size of the audience that attracts, but the immediacy of the feedback. The combination is irresistible. In terms of volume, candor, and immediacy of feedback from my blogging, it is the exact opposite of what I do professionally, making blogging inevitable for me. Because it is, after all, all about me. And the issues, of course. And electing more and better Democrats and stuff like that.