The first Friday of each month brings together beer bloggers around a common topic under the banner of The Session. This month Alan at A Good Beer Blog hosts, signing on literally one day before the deadline, because no one had stepped up to. As the blogging community debated whether The Session should continue, he gave us this:

So you are going to write about this: if we just “take the philosophical approach, that the Session has run its course” aren’t we really admitting that beer blogging is a massive failure? I say no. I say this is a fabulous way to cover up problem drinking with anti-social internet addictions. Maybe you know of another reason we should keep writing and try to make some sense of the beer and brewing world. Well, goodie for you. Write about it. Explain yourself.

Do you want the truth? Honestly, I write for one reason: because I like it.

This is for me. It’s a creative outlet. And then I hope other people like it and it kind of functions as marketing or brand awareness or something but that’s really secondary to the whole thing.

That’s been how I’ve approached creative things all my life, basically: do what makes me happy and hope other people enjoy it too, but if not, oh well: at least I had fun. Remember how there was a four part choose your own adventure series we did as 1/16 page ads in The Public? I thought it’d be fun. I highly recommend this course of action, by the way, because then you meet people who like what makes you happy and it makes them happy too and then you can be happy together.

So if the Session were to go away I would be sad, because I like being given writing prompts and I think au-prompts would weird people out eventually (although I could probably make this work). It looks like it won’t, because I happen to know that Sessions are set until at least February (hint hint), but if it did, I would shed a tear and then I’d keep writing. It might be more me listening to music, or playing board games, or if you’re particularly unlucky maybe even more poetry, but things would continue, because I would still want to write.

Because there’s been very little beer in this post about why I write about beer (the second dark truth is that the beer tends to come second): I wrote this while drinking an Oktoberfest, out of a 1 liter stein. I’ll probably write a post about the Oktoberfests I got in my mixed six pack, though I’m not going to say which one it is I’m drinking now because it tastes fairly sulphury in a way that makes me pretty sure that isn’t what the brewery intended. So, right there you have two prompts: how I’m drinking a beer I’m sure most people are “over” in a glass that’s far too big because screw it, liking things is harder but more fun than not liking things and I’ve decided I’m going to get into Oktoberfests this year; and how in many-to-most cases the beer community seems reticent to say anything bad about itself or its members.

Except, of course, for the people who like to say bad things about everything, but in lots of cases that goes back to the first part: it’s a lot easier to say everything sucks and retain an air of aloof detachment than actually admit to enjoying something non-ironically because that opens you up to ridicule. And I’m not talking about anyone in particular, especially our frequently recalcitrant host this month, but it’s been on my mind as I sip anything with “pumpkin spice” in the name and look forward to all 31 days in the month of Halloween.

So, that’s why I blog: because it makes me happy, and there are enough things that do not make me happy that I feel like I should keep doing it. And if enough other people also feel the same way — which it seems they do! — it’s worth continuing.