Why Blog? Why Bother?

Long summer days begin early

Blogging. Why? Is it communication or compulsion? Generous offering or mere self-indulgence? Sharing or performing? Fixing memories or bypassing experience?

All of the above?

Even so, evening comes too soon

My initial impulse back in 2007 was to share my life with friends, family, and bookstore customers who have only vacation time in Leelanau and ache for it the rest of the year. Quickly it became an avenue for self-expression, a substitute (pale or more vivid?) for the more concentrated, more creative writing I too rarely find time to do. There is also an aspect in my blogging that involves dreaming a future, e.g., the whole chicken thing. But, like a chicken, I’m sure that’s only scratching the surface of a deep tangle of complex motivations.

Right now it’s summer, though, and my bookstore life is fulltime and then some. Husband and dog and gardens take what attention I can give them: husband and dog – lucky for them! -- have an advantage over gardens in that the former can come to the bookstore, while the latter cannot.

Got most of mowing done before mower belt broke

Squash only needs watering

Attention needed here

(Needs no caption)

Torn and tired as I often feel, my world is beautiful in all its aspects – home, bookstore, and country commute from one to the other -- and I’m here now. I’m here now. Other bloggers contribute to enlarging my world with their thoughts and photographs, so why shouldn’t I do the same? I guess I also like to think that when I’m gone, when “now” has become “back then,” someone will remember “P.J. was here.” In case I never get any books of my own written, at least there will once have been “Books in Northport.”

Tonight, 7 p.m., Katey Schultz at Dog Ears Books.