Sometimes I ask myself why do I blog? Why do I take the pain of putting my thoughts into writing? What pleasure do I get? What kind of a blogger am I?
Have you thought about it? Have you ever wondered why you blog or why you read on what others have to say?
Blogging has been one of the most significant revolutions in the last decade or so. I think it has given that extra zing to literature (if you feel literature is too big a word, lets say to literary skills like reading/writing..:)). It really doesn’t matter how good or bad one is, one can always write something and publish them at no cost at all…And in the process if one can catch the imagination of the masses one can really get opportunities to do this full time, make money and live happily ever after (lol), which maybe wouldn’t have been possible without the exposure given by blogosphere..
There are various kinds of bloggers. Personal, pictures, videos, humor - you name it and there are blogs which talk about it…There are those who make quite a hefty money out of it too..Sometimes it so happens that the ads occupy more space than the content of the blog..:)
People say there’s a book inside everybody. The blogs just prove it and it has just let the book out! People always have had opinions, but the difference now is that they have a medium where they can express them freely…So we have been seeing an explosion of opinion. Now we can hear all sorts of voices on any subject. It’s true democracy at work. It’s been such a success that major news organizations have started quoting blogs in their articles to give credibility to what they are saying…
When I initially started out I just wanted some space where I can pour out my thoughts as an anonymous blogger. But with an url as stupid as mine how can one be anonymous? ;) So there I was writing articles on what I thought was interesting and what I thought I should be writing…I wrote articles on day-to-day happenings, philosophy, experiences, people, poems etc…If the article was not factual, it mostly would be my opinions. Sometimes I would just use it to vent my frustrations.
The blog helped me to write several articles on various subjects and the most importantly I found that I could write poems too…I was always under the impression that poems are the toughest nut to crack and most difficult to write, but thanks to blogging I was able to attempt it and am quite happy with the way I pen them now…Initially when I started blogging, everything I wrote was more explicit but as the days went by I could pen my thoughts without actually revealing too much…The poems helped me a lot in doing this..:)
There were days when I wrote what I thought was one of the best articles ever written, but there would be none who would comment on it…But there were other days when I would have written something more casual, which I thought wouldn’t touch people’s imagination, but eventually it would turn out that I was totally wrong…Each comment is special and it encourages you to write more...But having said that if one depends solely on comments for continuing to write, then you would stop blogging sooner rather than later…People might read your blog, come and visit it regularly but may not enter comments at all (that’s what I do to many of the blogs that I follow..:)). So the number of comments are never an indication for the popularity of a blog..
It does help to have people dropping in comments but if one writes articles for the sake of it then very soon one would stop writing because its an expectation that gets fulfilled very rarely…Again another thing is if you want to increase the number of hits on your blog or make money out of it then there are ways by which one can do so (like regularly publishing several posts a day… I have seen people do so and successfully too)
But such things wouldn’t be possible if your blog is more personal. The continued existence of personal blogs are a different reason altogether…And its tougher to continuously write or maintain personal blogs. Also people who follow such blogs are fewer in numbers. Eventually topics get restricted, and people just get plain lazy after a point of time.
Like practically everything else on the Web, blogs are easy to start and hard to maintain.
For me none of the above are really motivating factors (except of-course the valuable comments that you guys leave here..:)). Generally I write what comes to my mind on various topics, the experiences that I have had, the emotions etc that comes along this rollercoaster ride called ‘life’…Most often than not it has been a place where I can pour my heart out (and sometimes the pouring is done in such a way that others don’t get head or tail of what’s been written). But if I look at the blog I can relate to each and every post and each and every line of that post. It’s like Tendulkar saying he remembers every run he scores or the manner in which every time he gets out. The posts talk to me and I can feel the moment at which a particular line was written. Its really an amazing feeling to just walk through some of the posts that one has written over a long period of time…Sometimes I just laugh when I read some of the posts that I had written and it would seem silly now, but the important factor is to realize why and when it was written…I was a different person then and maybe/hopefully a different (or should I say more matured person) now…But still it gives me that happiness that I have continued over such a long period of time, not giving up in the process and carrying on..
I have strangely observed people having varying opinions about my writing…There are few who are pretty vocal about how or what I write, who encourage me to continue, who have few nice words to say at the end of each post, or who comment on the blog or otherwise comment whenever we get a chance to talk and its really heartening. But for every such kind there will be several others who take it upon themselves to ridicule the way I write, who comment on how naïve one could be to write articles such as these and how could I write such things on a blog. There are others who say its beautiful the way you write, but would make fun of it behind your back (I have had this experience too)..There are scores of others - silent spectators, who are on either sides of the fence…But again why do we blog? Every person is entitled for an opinion and its very easy to have one especially on stuffs that we write on…So it would really boil down to whom you want to listen at the end of the day (i.e assuming that you want to listen to someone..:))?
More often, somehow blogging has given me that extra happiness, a source to express my feeling, emotions, frustrations and someday I would like to visit the entire archive of my own blog and see how I have come along over a period of time..I have gained knowledge, confidence and extra talents while blogging…I have made many friends whom I have never really met, made some friends whom I had the pleasure of meeting only because I started blogging and the network just builds (now I have some friends from Pakistan!! Would that have been possible any other way?)…I had started blogging for a number of reasons and most of them still remain the reasons why I keep continuing…Only when you start venturing into something new or different and continue to pursue on it for sometime would you realize the benefits/advantages that come along with it. It makes one wonder what one would have missed if one hadn’t ventured into it…
As an individual, I would highly recommend that you have some sort of publishing strategy, whether it be a blog, newsletter, writing articles for magazines, website or whatever. It really helps in a lot of sense. This is an age where you need to build your reputation word by word. Start off by finding something people care about and most importantly something that you care about.
