Hello audience. It’s hard to know who you are. I know some of you are not really visiting as much as just dropping by, passing through.

But it’s the thought of you being out there, sometimes keeping watch, that shapes so much of what I do on this blog.

What should I write about? How much to reveal? How to not be boring? The latter is hard to avoid when not revealing too much. Hard to walk the narrow line between privacy and reader engagement. It’s hard to be funny, or real, or anything when hiding things.

So it is strange. This desire to write, to reveal, and to open up, when there’s an equally strong desire to protect anonymity, to remain private. Why do I reach out to you people in the blogosphere? Don’t I have enough friends in my face-to-face world? I do, I do. But this is different. Sometimes wonder if it’s kind of like a masquerade ball. We all get to dress up in over-the-top, bejewelled splendour so we can parade before others and be admired, so we can prance and pretend, while at the same time hiding our true selves behind a gilt mask.

When I am too busy to blog, I fret about you out there. If I don’t write, eventually, nobody will visit. If I write too infrequently, or cannot be depended upon to produce a post on a regular basis, am I letting down the blogging community. So silly, really, when I don’t know any of you (ok, perhaps I know just a handful of people, but still…).

I think it is the desire to add my voice to the blogging world that keeps me turning up, that keeps me going despite knowing I might be speaking to a void. It’s the desire to belong to this online community of people who entertain and feed our need to express, listen and be heard, or read. I am not just here for me. I am here for you, and ultimately, for us all.