Yesterday on MyBlogLog, I received a message from Rod tagging me in the MEME-O-RAMA: Why Do I Blog?.

I touched on this a little bit back in May, 2005. Back then, I had recently taken a job as BlogMaster for John DeStefano’s Gubernatorial bid in Connecticut. So, part of my answer was then, I get paid for it. I do not currently have any paid blogging gigs, but I don’t rule out other paid gigs in the future.

Related to that, there is political expression. I have political viewpoints that I want to communicate. This ties into the old discussion about whether bloggers are journalists, advocates, Group psychotherapists, diarists, or something else.

For me, I take on all these roles from one point to another, except maybe that of group psychotherapists. Depending on the role being taken on, different codes of ethics apply, but I’ve been thinking more and more about a proactive code of ethics based on ideas from psychological first aid.

I guess this gets to an underlying theme, the desire to help people around me, to bring healing and comfort, whether it be through better journalism, advocacy, or just taking about stuff, sort of like bringing donuts to a person that grieves.