Why am I doing this?

If someone asks me the question, why do I blog? Atul framed the question in a different way. My answer would be a one liner (the best answers are) – accha lagta hain, it feels good. This ‘feel good factor’ is unlike the ad agency fabricated campaign generalising the feel of five percent of the nation for the entire populace.

This blog thing has been around for quite some time and I was a late starter (May 2005). Had earlier experimented with personal webpages, but found the experience quite unsatisfactory. One they were quite cumbersome to build and the free hosts never supported the features that I wanted to incorporate. Then I discovered blogging and felt that this was my kind of thing.

I read a lot of magazines, rather purchase a lot. Every morning the newspaper boy shoves in a sizeable bundle through the gap in my door. On reaching work there’s another pile waiting on my desk. But I never wrote a single letter to the editor. Well, there was one, again that was just a cross posting of a blog post exemplifying my stand on what the editor of the magazine had written about on an issue that was (and is) a boiling one. The thing that I liked about blogging was that it is an impersonal sharing of thoughts extendable by personal threads.

I was never the chatroom types, even social networking couldn’t (yet) suck me in. I liked the evening addas over cups of tea, samosas and sweets (many people find it amusing that Bengalis relish sweets with tea). The blog isn’t exactly an adda, chatrooms are thought to be closer. For me the blog is my adda (somewhat reflected by its title). The people I talk to, know me (through what I write or shoot) and the ones I speak too seem familiar, just like college buddies of different sensibilities, ideologies and abilities. The blog gave me to space to speak out and the time to listen.

When I began, I was choked. The flow started coming much later and am still waiting for the full spout. There are still a few hiccups, but that is reminiscent of what we were told as kids – a hiccup is indicative of someone thinking of you. Have written a lot on this blog (this is the 374th post) and the topics fill up my category/label list. Some posts are a big hit, while most stay ignored. Some get me feedback, others leave the reader speechless (uninterested might be more appropriate). That only encourages. Blogging for me is first about what I have to say and then about what others listen.

Friends, initially, couldn’t be more discouraging. What’s there in the blog? They asked. Later a few started their own, only to give up midway. Today, they provide me with the ideas to blog about. “You should write something about this,” they say. “It’s only a little blog,” I retort. “It’s at least something,” they reason. Some even ask me to start a guest column and like a snobbish editor, “I’ll think about that,” I reply.

Sometimes I get the feeling akin to the frog in the well. The blog is my well, but then it has a lot of windows. The blog is my well with windows. I can open or close them whenever I feel like. Sometimes a stale wind might force them open or bang them close. But that cannot make me leave my well. For that I have a full-time job which also pays for the activities in the well.

I don’t get paid in dollars to do this (yes, I have Adsense, but do you think that I’ll ever make money out of that?). I get paid in satisfaction, that I have done something, however worthless it might seem to someone else. I talk of war and peace, I rave and others rant about the clothes I wear. I justify the things that I (and my kind) do. I let my opinion known. I fulfill unrealised desires. I do a lot more. I blog.

[This is a part of an unstructured tag/meme. If you want to be a part of this, please feel to shed some light on your blogexperience. Details are available here.]

Other blogexperiences

* Letting the Light Through
* Why I Blog
* Still On Blogging
* Dexterous Doings: A story