some questions

So. Here's the thing... I'm still not completely clear about what I'm doing here. Is this just something meant to entertain myself, my family and friends, or should I be aiming my thoughts and observations at a larger audience?

I'm still not sure how this all works. It's not like Flickr where I can look at other people's work and comment upon it, or if it is like that then I haven't figured it out yet. I imagine there must be something like groups of bloggers interested in the same topics, but how do I find them? How do they find me?

It bugs me that we're living in a time when we're meant to learn new things intuitively, and no one bothers to write directions or instruction manuals anymore. I miss instruction manuals. Reading and comprehending instructions and directions was something I was good at; a valuable skill that's now almost completely obsolete.

In order to learn something new these days we're expected to spend a lot of time stumbling around until we figure things out for ourselves - which sometimes makes me feel like a lab rat in a maze. Or maybe I'm just guilty about the inordinate amount of time I've already spent fooling around online?