how do I get my blog out there?

I have now, as you can see, started a blog. It was one of those spur of the moments flashes of just do it - so I did it right there and then before both the flash and the spur of the moment disappeared.

I just now signed up to the google webmaster tools, which they say will help my page show up on search results etc.

But how else do I get my blog out there?
are there forums where you can post your blog to interested blog readers somewhere, or is it just to keep on writing blog after blog, and hope that someone actually reads them and sooner or later through word and mouth (or more likely email or IM) I will have a small group of readers...

That's naturally assuming that the people reading it in the first place actually like what they are reading, making them bothered enough to come back, and more so recommend it to someone else. I do however think we should go with that assumption, the option that no one likes my writing simply isn't an attractive enough option to contemplate.

granted I guess writing is a rather selfish meditation, like all arts, but where is the fun in writing a blog if no one reads it... then you might as well write a diary. or alternatively letters to random people in your address book.

did you just notice how I in the sentence above referred to my own writing as art. although I would argue that it is, in a way. If you think about it all forms of expressing oneself through a special medium can be considered art. But maybe I am pushing it by comparing my off the cuff writing to art.

It all depends I guess, I am not writing only for myself, I am writing because I want to get a message or many messages out there. I am writing because I am concerned or desperately want to make people aware of things that they will not read in the news papers, or see on the TV. I am writing because I feel I have to do something, and not just sit by and look as we are all getting blindfolded, ball gagged, and slapped.

So I guess it is a selfish thing... I am doing it so that I can feel like I did, am doing and have done something - and I realize that in the written form I will probably seem slightly less intense. apparently I can come across forceful when I discuss certain issues in the flesh, it is somehow easier to get hijacked by your emotions when you are talking about something that you feel passionately about then when you are writing.... and you can not go back and change what you just have said, but I can always reread what I have just written, and by doing so, remove or fix anything that is a bit over the top, or just plain boring.... but then how do you assess what is boring?

ohh so many questions, no political activism in this post just a question to whoever happens to read this: how do I get my blog out there?

Thank you!