When I informed my sister I planned to update my blog tonight, she responded with the expected question: “What are you writing about?” And in the rhythm of family banter, I responded with the usual, “I don’t know yet.”

That brief exchange provided the focus of this post (I swear I approach each entry with a topic in mind, despite my writing’s often-meandering nature): why I blog. Yep, today I’m blogging about blogging — maybe I can coin the term “meta-blogging.” All right, never mind.

But back to the “why” of blogging. In my methodical world of color-coded, well, everything, blogging provides an outlet for my spontaneous side (it exists, I promise). Without the confinement of a detailed prompt, a target word count, a page limit or an impending deadline (unless my bedtime counts), blogging is a space to ramble with a point and challenge/develop my writer voice — to free my wannabe-rebel alter-ego through intentional sentence fragments, unconventional capitalization and (gulp) the occasional expletive.

Blogging is more about the process than the product for me. I typically write about what I’m baffled by, what I’ve barely begun to ponder. The blog I created for a class assignment has since evolved into a realm for everything from fangirling over ‘90s sitcoms to exploring the value of reflection. A place to experiment.

And perhaps most importantly, blogging is a place to begin sentences with the forbidden “and” or “but” — like a total badass.