The need to write....is it unique?

When I ask is it unique i don't mean unique to me, because that answer would be a very quick NO of course. In fact i am motivated to start this blog and join the maddening chorus of voices out there because of the writings of friends and others. Reading and hearing the voices in my my head got me to thinking and wondering about my own voice.

I should of course confess that i have had any number of half birthed blogs stared on this service and others and they never really got off the ground. And by "really" i of course mean "at all. They all fell to the exact same fate - writers block. This is the famous kind of writers block.....a stagnation....i imagine cogs of machines grinding metallic in my head, creaking to get an idea out. This happened time and again and the pre-blogs were abandoned on the streets of the internet.

After careful consideration and talking with a few other friends that have gone through this the problem is not, as it might seem, a lack of idea but actually too many. And to take one friend's advice, which sounds far too wise to have come form him personally:

"if you write for your audience, you'll never write
if you write for you, you'll write all the time"
-Author's name held until asked

So that brings me back to my title - the need to write. Writing is not something that i have had enjoyment with in as long as i can remember. In recent memory, my only association with writing is work related either with the preponderance of emails modern IT requires or in the authoring of the countless documents the job requires. So let us suffice to say that writing is at best a disassociated activity for me.

I am trying to regain my enjoyment of reading for some of the same reasons. My office at home has about 35 400+ page books on all matters technical. Those books and the ones that came before them basically made me not pick up a book for fun for at least 10 years. Reading became a chore, a thing that was necessary. Not enriching but if you could imagine your life if you had no taste buds. Eating would be a thing you did.....that you had to do but you probably wouldn't have a lot of love for food.

Is writing unique in some way? I want to get back into reading for enjoyment because it can offer me new ways of thought and expression that no other medium can right now. I wonder if anyone can tell me what writing can offer, personal writing in the bloggy type, what does it do for you?