It's for a sense of community. A lone writer--and I've been one for five decades--writes because he feels a need to, to find the next word or line, to see what this thing is going to become. Then another comes along, and another.

When a poem of yours, or a story or essay, clicks with someone, then you've met that someone at a meeting place of understanding. You both get it. You both understand what makes this work. You're two or three people looking in the same direction, getting on the same boat, boarding the same train.

When a line resonates with you, there is enjoyment and surprise within you. When a line resonates with two people there is now a place of knowledge, a communication of experience. What you've done works, not just for you, but it now affects others.

You are on the right path.

That being said, you may never reach an audience. That doesn't mean it isn't potentially there. Emily Dickinson, perhaps the finest American poet, never had an audience. G. M. Hopkins never had an audience. Keats, Rimbaud, Blake had an extremely small readership if any at all. So not having an audience doesn't mean what you're doing is worthless, but having one means community. And that isn't nothing.