The Other McCain urged people to help out Zilla  – who apparently needed a few bucks to avert the end of her blog.  Generous people helped out and all is well.  But it got me thinking – do people really blog for money?

Looking around the new version of B4V, I don’t see the “tip jar” that I recall seeing on the old version.  My presumption is that Matt hasn’t found the time to install it, but I don’t know if the old one was ever hit.  I do have one over at Noonan for Nevada, but I’ve never received anything from it.  I don’t even know why I had my cracker-jack tech support team (my stepson) install one on N4N…I guess it is just the convention to have one.

My point here is that I do this for love – I love to write, love to spout off, love to have some give and take of debate.  Love to see all of you here.  Love the notes I get every now and again when someone tells me that what I’ve written had special meaning for them.  Love the fact that for each of you who comment there are hundreds more who come here every day just to read.  When I can’t think of something interesting to write I feel like I’m letting people down.  When I make a mistake I feel like I’ve betrayed a trust.  When I see someone powerful using my exact words to describe a situation I delight in the evidence that they – or, at least, their aides – are checking the blog.  I do this for no money and whether or not I ever make any money at writing, you can count on me doing this until the day I die.  Rely on it, if there isn’t a post by me for a couple days and there wasn’t an announcement that I’m on vacation or some such, then I’m dead.

Don’t get me wrong – if any of you out there are secretly billionaires and want to write a $100,000.00 check to me, I’m going to cash it.  That is Mark Noonan, by the way.  But it wouldn’t change why I blog, or what I blog about, or my opinions.  They say you should do what you love, regardless of whether it is profitable – and when I’m blogging, that is precisely what I’m doing.