“Strive not to be
a success,
but rather to be
of value.” 
Albert Einstein

“How many followers do you have on your blog?” It was an innocent enough question. It would have been nice if I could have provided an accurate response, but nothing is less important to me than how many followers or subscribers regularly read my blog posts. Would it be important if more people followed it than actually do? Perhaps, but my purpose for writing is not to count the number of readers. Nor do I have any interest in monetizing my blog, which seems to be the thing to do these days. I write because I love writing.

Okay, I’ll admit that I do appreciate feedback from readers. Every now and then, someone will leave a comment, click “Like,” or send me a text or email telling me that they enjoyed a particular post. My motivation for blogging, however, is not linked to any dopamine hit I may receive from such positive feedback.

Benjamin Franklin once said, “Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.” I believe I have done both in my lifetime. I would like to believe that every piece I post on A Beacon of Light is worth reading. I am also confident that I have had some amazing opportunities in my life to engage in activities worth writing about. Maybe this is why I find it so easy to publish consistently. 

Stephen J. Dubner is the award-winning journalist who co-authored the book Freakonomics twenty years ago today. In a discussion about blogging and bloggers, he said, “The typical blogger, like most people who go on diets and budgets, quits after a few months, weeks, or in many cases, days.” I’m sure there is some truth to this, though I have not researched this myself. For this reason, Dubner would describe me as an atypical blogger. 

I began blogging about gratitude on December 23, 2006 when I launched Attitude of Gratitude. In 2022, after posting almost 2,000 pieces on my blog, I decided to create a new blog on a new platform. My gratitude blog was hosted by Typepad in San Francisco. In November 2022, I launched A Beacon of Light on WordPress. Rather than focusing exclusively on gratitude, this new blog allows me to write about positivity in general — about what’s good in the world.

Darren Rowse is the founder of Problogger.com. His words about what makes a blog successful are fairly simple. He said, “The key to success in blogging (and in many areas of life) is small but regular and consistent actions over a long period of time.” Using Rowse’s metric for measuring the success of a blog, I would like to think that my 18+ years of consistent blogging speak for themselves. 

Kevin Anderson, author of more than 140 books, made this startling analogy about blogging. He said, “The bottom line is that blogging is like sex. You can’t fake it. You can’t fake passion. You can’t fake wanting to engage with the public. If you do, it will ultimately be an unsatisfying experience for both the blogger and their readers.” I guess that works!

So why do I blog? What has motivated me to share my thoughts on my blogs for more than eighteen years? Scott Adams, the creator of the Dilbert comic strips, may have explained it better than I can. He said, “I think the pleasure of completed work is what makes blogging so popular. You have to believe most bloggers have few, if any, actual readers. The writers are in it for other reasons. Blogging is like work, but without coworkers thwarting you at every turn. All you get is the pleasure of a completed task.”

For me, that pleasure is motivation enough to keep writing.