A World Never Quite Finished

As children it seems magical, perhaps bad magic, that so many people come and then disappear from our lives. Moving as a child means that many people disappear. It is like being moved from one enchantment to another without ever figuring out the magic words or curses. It creates a huge gulf of confusion, a sudden disappearance of sense and meaning, and perhaps leads to the creation of a fantasy world that is more consistent, more maleable than the real world. It makes us all creators, artists.
I don't know what makes a person want to paint or write or dance, other than to entertain others (a risky business and hard to do)or to create a world that is understood. A few find a comfortable life through art, but most don't. As a hobby, we never completely master the skills needed.
The process, sometimes struggle, pays off with meaning or with the state where what one is doing seems to call upon another magic, almost out of time. I am using writing as an example. A distant cousin of mine whom I love very much (Lars Ly) always has five or six paintings in his studio. He moves between them, perhaps waiting for one of them to capture him. And when a painting is done is instinctual in the sense that there is no definition.
I also have a friend who complains about all she has given up to be a writer and threatens occasionally to stop. She just published a CD of her reading essays about what it was like to be a Cuban refugee dumped into the upper Midwest. Her name is Marisella Veiga and the CD is called Square Watermelons. This is a plug. I listened to it and it is amusing, relaxing (the soft voice) and profound.
I myself have had the fear, probably irrational, that at the point where I have a great book of poetry or an appreciative editor for a novel, that those genres will no longer be read. I will be obsolete. Blogs give me that feeling. And I guess I miss the fence between myself and the world that a book provides. It has an audience, but that audience is only fictionalized in the mind of the author and becomes a bit more real when he or she meets a reader. But the book is not me, it is something I made. Blogs seem to insist that this is me.
Of course everything we do creates identity. The work of blogging is creating identity. This is who I am and your reactions tell me who you think I am. Since identity is social, both processes are necessary. I still am a bit leary of the blog. And disappointed with everything about the writing life, except writing itself.