300 posts down and 10 years of blogging …

My previous post on the books haul at Hyderabad Book Fair was my 300^th post on my blog.  I started blogging in January 2008 and it is ten years now.

The first year was wonderful.  I had the enthusiasm of a beginner and posted a lot of articles on a range of subjects – books and pens were the major topics.  I wrote a little bit about music, and some on travel.  Those 74 posts in 2008 look huge now, in retrospect, considering how much less I have written in the subsequent years.  I am not doing numbers here, but yeah, when I look at the lesser numbers – in 2010 and 2011, I fell down to 12 and 10 respectively – I feel bad.  I have said this before … there were many occasions when I felt I could no longer keep this blog going.  Some other external pressure or personal frustration would bog me down and I couldn’t muster enough enthusiasm to write and there was this feeling that I was neglecting my blog.  This, kind of became a personal battle … it was a strange thing, but I also felt that if I let go of writing here and sort of close my blog, then there is no coming back … I am done.  I wanted to hang on … it was like that painted leaf in that O’ Henry story.  I don’t know why I get into such appalling mental situations.  So, year after year, meagre posts every year getting meagre-r, I hung on, climbing up bit by bit, and still climbing.  I was climbing, surely.  I identified my success or failure by how active I was on my blog.  It is also because I wasn’t doing anything else apart from my job, and I should have been doing something worthwhile … so this is my blog story …

It was much later I discovered that I could link my posts on my Facebook page and it has become much more convenient to give some publicity to my posts … now I provide a link on my LinkedIn page too.   Some people take it from there.   Sometimes I feel I should campaign to increase followers on my blog, only ten people follow my blog!!  Maybe there are more leaders than followers in this world … or maybe I am not sufficient leadership material … oh come on, maan, you’ve got nothing to lose …

I have written some reviews of books that I had read and liked … neither the publishers nor the authors had asked me to, but I wanted to and wrote them.  A couple of authors located reviews of their books here and linked them to their sites or pages.  I came across these links accidentally … ah well, chaps, a line in acknowledgement or a comment on my blog would have made me happy.  

So, what next, Jai … go on writing?  Oh yeah, absolutely … no question about that …  but this year I want to be a bit more eclectic and write about a lot of other things I like … I have some friends who have ‘liked’ my writings … KBS Krishna for one, Vinod is my earliest supporter … Shubha is another reader … Shruti reads sometimes.  Actually KBS Krishna, who teaches English at Central University of Himachal Pradesh, was instrumental in converting two of my travel book reviews into an article and having it published in the Spring Magazine on English Literature.  So, that is one point I have in favour of continuing writing on my blog.