I have had websites for over 25 years now. None of my original ones are still around, but I have been working with websites and development since HTML tags were the only option, and JavaScript had yet to be developed, back in the day when adding a Flash element was king. But one thing that was always in there, no matter the technology, was why I created the website: what is the audience, and why write content for it. Who was the intended reader for the writer?

I think that is what everyone that posts, writes, or creates anything askes. But with the advent of AI and quick content, why do we write? Who do we write for? Are we comfortable writing for a readership of one?

Do we write to answer these questions?

• Will people like this?
• How many people will read it?
• Is this what my audience wants me to say?
• Will people share, praise, or talk about it?
• If nobody notices it, was writing it worth anything?
• How can I monetize it?

Or do we write to answer these questions?

• What do I actually think about this?
• What did I discover while trying to put this into words?
• Am I being honest with myself?
• Did writing this change or clarify what I believed?
• Was this worth writing even if nobody else ever reads it?

In the past years I have found that I have been writing for the first set of questions, not for the second set of questions. I have been writing for the likes, the comments, the praise, and the visiblity. And it has been killing me. I have found that I write not to write, but to be read. As I have talked about in previous ramblings, I think that the journey can be the most important part of the process. I am not talking about the Great Unthinking, but I am talking about the giving up on writing, the putting down the paper and pen, and just falling into the darkness.

Let's take a look at a scenario that will illustrate what I am talking about. Let's say you want to write about a local City Council meeting or a decision that was made by the City Council. Let's say they had a meeting where they are going to increase property tax by ~200%. Your audience is to inform the residents in the area. You are going to attend the meeting, then sit down and write an 800-word article on the meeting.

You attend the meeting and write your article. After publishing it, you find that someone else published a similar article. But after looking into it, you see that the second article was written by someone who fed the council meeting audio into AI, and they then had AI write an 800-word summary for their article. As you watch, you notice that the AI article becomes more popular; it gains more readers and likes and is shared more than your article. If you wrote the article for the first set of questions, then you see yourself as a failure, because an AI-written article surpasses your readership.

You then start to question your writing. Are you a good writer? Why do you even write? What was the purpose of going to the meeting and writing the article? With little to no effort, an article written by AI has left your work in the dust. You get discouraged, you put down the paper and pen, and then in the future you don't write, and you wait for others to write.

But what if you look at it with the second set of questions? What if you write not for others, but for a readership of one. And that readership of one is the writer, not the others.

Think about what happened during the journey of writing the article. First you had to leave the comfort of your home; you went out among others, heard other opinions, and listened to others that were not there to write their articles. You were able to pick up on the emotion, the feeling, and the vibe of the others. You were able to ingest what they were feeling, saying in offhand comments, and you picked up the things that were not fed into the AI.

You then went home, collected your thoughts, and wrote what you felt and heard and understood. You find yourself stopping mid-sentence, rewriting it, and re-crafting it. You find that your opinion, your stance, and your feeling change partway through the article; you re-adjust, and you re-hone your stance and position. Then you published your article; it was not your 800-word goal, but it was your words, your thoughts.

Then ask yourself, even if you were the only one that read what you wrote, did you as the initial reader change? Are you not a slightly different person than you were before you wrote the article? Why can't that be enough? Why do we have to worry about likes, shares, and other readers? One reader for sure has changed and become a different individual, even if that was only you. Writing is primarily for the writer, the initial reader, not for social media appeal or praise.

Thinking this way has changed several views that I have had, and yes, writing this rambling has made me a different person than I was in the reeds, it has increased me, even if I am the only frog that reads it.

When I was growing up, and currently, I have belonged to a religion that has taught that writing a journal is important. Some of the leaders would say that the reason was for future readers. We were encouraged to write our thoughts, failures, triumphs, and testimonies because they were so future descendants would know us. They would be a legacy for future generations and our children. I have seen these journals; I have seen them passed down from generation to generation, and I have seen them forgotten. So what is the purpose? Why write the journals if they are not going to get future likes, shares, and mentions? Maybe the writing is not for the benefit of future generations, but the writing is for the benefit of the writer, as the initial reader. Writing is an opportunity to reflect on life, recognize blessings, process personal and spiritual experiences, learn from the past, and hopefully give us a better understanding of ourselves and things around us.

I find that I have in the past written with the goal of how I can influence others and future generations. And as I wrote for those reasons, I found that my writing was more hollow, without feeling, and ended with discouragement because it never was good enough for likes, shares, and praise.

One of the reasons for this site is to grow and change as I write. Can AI write with better spelling, syntax, and grammar? Can AI access the works of Shakespeare, Tolkien, the Founding Fathers, and the philosophers of the past quicker than I can? Can AI summarize the content faster than I can? Can AI write an 800-word article faster than I can? You bet it can. If my goal is to get likes, shares, and the praise of others, I can't compete. Maybe competing with AI for those things is the wrong contest. But if I write for myself, if I write to understand, to grow, and to increase myself, then yes, I can write better than any AI. If I write for a readership of one, and that person is myself, with the goal of becoming slightly better than before I write, then I win, and the world wins. The swamp, the reeds, and the frogs all become better because I have become better because of the journey of writing.

Could AI have written an 800 word article on this topic in seconds? You bet it could. But I have grown in the two hours it has taken to write this rambling. I passed 800 words and ended at roughly 1,300 words, apparently the reader of one needed a few more to understand the topic.