Communication

This morning I wrote my monthly letter to my daughter which will wend its way to her via a third party and which, so far, I receive no answers to, and this got me thinking about communication and relationships.  Has communication occurred when it appears to be one-sided?  I then thought about the blogs I read and one entry specifically where the writer commented that the point of writing a blog was not to be heard.  Casey Kochmer in his blog A Personal Tao said yesterday that the reason "to blog: is to hear life...I blog these posts because each entry is a chance for me to listen to life, to hear ideas and chew upon thoughts."  And I realize that he is quite right.  I read a number of blogs because they offer me a chance to chew on thoughts and most of the time I don't reply or post a comment, so the blogger then would have no idea what thoughts his/her post generated.  Does that mean communication didn't occur?  I think not!  And I know from Google's stats that people are reading my blog, but so far no comments have been posted, so I too have no idea what thoughts might have been generated by something I said.  But as with my letter this morning, I get a great deal out of the writing.  It gives me an opportunity to focus my thoughts and I hope to listen to life.  I make connections this way between various levels of my life, various aspects of my life.  Would I like an answer to my letters?  Would I enjoy comments from readers?  Of course, but as Casey said so succinctly, "To be heard is actually an after effect of blogging only...", and no matter how nice (or I suppose not nice) that after effect is, it is still not the reason for blogging, and communication is occurring in any act of writing, I think, whether or not the writer knows of the after effects or whether in some cases, the writer is only communicating with his/herself.