Here’s a great rule of thumb that any good writer will tell you, and has been told to me many times: Know your audience.  If you’re writing a term paper, your audience is your professor.  A legal brief, the supervising attorney/partner and ultimately, the judge.  A Facebook status update, your network of friends.

The problem with the rule is that it prevents you from writing when there is no obvious audience, or when you do not have a target one in mind.  If you cannot tailor your writing, how are you supposed to write?  That problem is, primarily, why I have not had my own blog in way too long.

But last week I realized that there is a target audience for this blog: Me.  My goal here is simply to get my thoughts into words, and then to have them stored somewhere (semi-)permanently so I can remember what I thought, and why.  In retrospect, it makes a lot of sense.  No one else out there is going to make me their target audience, at least not on a regular basis.   If no one else reads or comments, that is OK; but if someone else wants to follow along, all the better.  The writer side of me does not mind if more people show up to listen or comment, and the audience-side of me appreciates the company and the feedback.