How’d this happen? I now have  four blogs that relate to different areas of my life, five if you count the one I started as a way to get my psychology students involved in some dialogue. I’m wondering if they’re all necessary or whether I’m using them as an excuse not to work on articles, stories, or another book. I honestly don’t know. I tell myself that it’s good practice, and yet there’s that nagging feeling of wasting time.

This afternoon I looked through the writing prompts in the WordPress eBook entitled  365 Days of Writing Prompts and spotted several that struck my fancy. The book is a great source of ideas for writers who need a little nudge, and today I came across one entitled “All About You.” The directions were to “Explain why you chose your blog’s title and what it means to you.”

I jumped right on this prompt for two reasons: (1) It’s an easy one to tackle and (2) It will hopefully help me to get some focus on exactly what my purpose is in blogging.

Mom’s Musings (www.marlajayne.wordpress.com) is my first blog, and I started it as a venue to post things I was thinking about that related to my life as a wife, mother, and grandmother. It’s a hodgepodge sort of blog on which I feel free to explore a variety of topics. This week I’ve been writing about exercise, marathon and half marathon tips, and the half marathon experience in Myrtle Beach yesterday.

Beating a Path (www.jpbowers.wordpress.com) the teaching blog, came from a poem that a student wrote for me years ago. Written on pink-lined paper and framed in a black frame, I kept it in my office for years and years. WS was the student who penned the poem, and although I thought of him as an older man,  he was probably only in his mid- 40’s. He was a gem of a person and student, a good role model for all around him.

This blog, now simply entitled Jayne Bowers, was originally entitled  Gossip and Solitude and was started as reading and writing blog, a place to post things about my books (the ones I’ve written, the ones I’m working on, and the ones I’m reading). The original title came from a line in one of Nancy Peacock’s books about writing, A Broom of Her Own. In the book, Ms. Peacock says that writers need two things, gossip and solitude. By gossip, she means the type of information and richness that interacting and observing people can provide, not the behind your back type of cheap talk that the term often implies.

Admission: I started taking an online course about website development in the hope that I could learn how to change the above blog into a website, thus the name change. Now that I’m nearly through with the course, I’ve learned that I’d probably be better off to start anew with a clean slate. Develop a website and then add the blog. All that to say that I’ll probably either go back to Gossip and Solitude as a name or come up with a new one entirely.

A couple of weeks ago, I started another blog entitled Crossing the Bridge (www.jaynepbowers.wordpress.com) to post things about student success and get some action going for my students. And to be honest, I wouldn’t mind generating some book sales. The eBook is only $3.99, and it’s a virtual fount of information for a college student and his or her parents.

Shrink Rapping is another blog (www.psychcentral.wordpress.com), the one for psychology students, and its title was fun to discuss and decide on. At one time, I was actively involved with this blog, but now that I’m semi-retired, I don’t have as much time or inclination to post on it.

So, there you have it, the results of brainstorming because of a simple prompt. I’d highly recommend this WordPress eBook of 365 prompts to all aspiring writers. Because of it, you know the names and purposes of my current blogs.  Although I’m no closer to knowing my purpose(s) in creating and writing them, it was fun to write this post.

Okay, all you bloggers. Why do you do it? Another way of asking that question is why are you blogging instead of writing poetry, articles, stories, or books? Or is what you’re blogging about going to be used as part of another publication?