Futility Factor

This blog has seen a long drought of neglect, mostly due to my energies being consumed by the demands of the workaday existence. I've settled into a bit of a routine that has carried me along for the last few months now and so much of my mental capacity is used up teaching, (as anyone who's ever taught before knows) that finding the motivation and discipline to maintain a blog is not easy to summon. Often I just want to find a comfortable horizontal position when the demands of my workday are complete, and stay there. I would be lying if I said I didn't have time for this however. There are a myriad of reasons why someone decides to continue or discontinue their blogging habits, and my situation is no different. There's the whole "blogging is futile" factor. When I stop to consider how massively saturated the blogosphere is, with a forum for every obscure fetish or extremist political view, I get that sinking feeling that my meagre contribution is just another forgettable blip in an ocean of forgettable blips. Why does anyone blog then? Does it give us that empowering feeling that we are candidly sharing our thoughts with a hidden audience out there in cyberland and thereby influencing change on a mass scale? Nobody can be so naive as to believe that this has the power to do much of anything other than provide an instant profile of recognition for said blogger. It's another filtering device for our egoes, one that presumes that people out there are going to take precious time out of their lives to read the self-conscious pontificating of amateur social-scientists. If futility factor weighs in heavily to discourage me from maintaining a blog then that can be used to justify avoidance of other endeavours, like making music or art or even housecleaning. If the chances of someone stopping to appreciate it or even acknowledge it are miniscule, then why bother with the whole exercise? It becomes merely another vehicle for self-indulgence in our culture -- as if we need any more, and it implies that the blog author is not someone who is doing something out there in the world of consequence like all the busy and productive people who don't have time to read blogs.
So why do I keep (or sporadically keep) a blog going? It's because, even though I know that it may not be read by many, it is a chance for me to distill and refine my views and because standing on the street corner and unleashing my disgust through a megaphone would get me arrested.