I wrote the following as a comment on another blog, but I think it stands on its own pretty well, so I'm including it here.

I think you are hitting a bunch of important issues here. Why do we blog? I’ve often suggested that for many writers, independent of the medium used, and I include myself in this category, we write because we must. It is part of who we are. It isn’t about audience.

Yet, nonetheless, our audience affects how we present ourselves. It changes us. In a lot of ways it isn’t really any different than how our audience affects us in terms of what we wear or say when someone tells us that they like the outfit we have on, or our new haircut.

Yeah, visuals matter. It affects whether or not people pay attention to what we are saying, and while we may not write for an audience, there is something satisfying to know that someone is reading what you are writing and the words aren’t simply disappearing into a bit bucket.

It would be nice if appearances didn’t matter. It would be nice if our blogs were judged not by the color of the background but by the content of the words. Unfortunately, we haven’t yet achieved that dream.

So, keep on writing. It changes you and that can be a good thing.