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.

My blog is my battlefield … nine years and blogging on …

For someone who has been blogging for nine years, the number of posts I have written (not even 300 posts so far …) is hardly anything … I don’t average even 50 posts a year … by my standards, at least, my first year of blogging was prolific … I wrote 74 posts … I remember that I wanted to write about anything and everything that piqued my interest … I wrote about a great number of things … books, fountain pens, music, travel, my research, a couple of poems, humour, films, personal musings … it was exciting and also in some ways innocent … I thought of myself as a writer and all I wanted was my posts to be read … Vinod’s blog inspired me to have one of my own and he encouraged me with occasional comments … by this time, I had made friends with Hari through FPN, and he too was generous with his comments on posts about fountain pens … and some friends from FPN too used to visit and leave their comments … I enjoyed writing and that year was a good period … 

But then on, it has been a free fall … I have never been able to match or even come near that figure of 74 in subsequent years … things went from bad to worse … from 25 posts in 2009, I slipped to 12 in 2010, then 10 posts in 2011 … till 2014, I was still in the doldrums … but frankly speaking, this was the only sensible thing I was doing … college life and teaching had become mind numbing and routine … only reading and music sustained me to some extent … I had one problem though … I wanted to write fully rounded posts that covered all aspects of the matter on hand … and till I had all facts or things (that need to be photographed), I didn’t start writing … sometimes, everything would be there, but I would have no time (sometimes, no inclination) to take photos or scan images … and this would stretch on and I would realise that the entire month has gone by …  sometimes, I would wonder why I take all this trouble to keep this blog going …  I would get angry at myself … all this would happen, and then I would console myself … running away is easy … so, I would dig my heels in … and at the beginning of 2015 I decided to be blunt with myself … come what may, I am going to write at least 4 posts per month … January went by as planned, but I slipped up in February and March, picked up in April and May, again a dip in June … from then on till December, I was able to hold on … I had written 47 posts … more than double the number of posts I wrote the previous year …  I felt really pleased with myself at the end of the year …

And then the same old story in 2016 … this time I was really pissed at the beginning of 2016 … it was as if I couldn’t cope with things any more … at that time, the only things I could vent my anger was on my hair and my blog … I cut my long locks, which I had nurtured till it had reached a good ponytail level (a teenage dream fulfilled at the onset of old age … ha ha ha … ) … and decided to shelve my blog … I knew I was being foolish, but those were the only things I could do without hurting anybody …

Then in March, I decided enough of all this stupidity, and wrote my first post in 2016 … an honest account of my misery and despondency … but I didn’t link it to my facebook page … and I knew that hardly anybody visits my blog directly … so in a sense, it escaped attention, and needless questions … but one can’t say … I decided to hang on … and just about managed to keep my head above water … after 4 determined posts in March, April skipped past without any posts … one in May, and then on I held on and finished 2016 with 32 posts … much less than 2015, but better than the years before that … phew … I am happy that I managed to come out on top, in my own way, in spite of an impetuous plan in the middle of the year that backfired spectacularly …

January was unexpectedly busy with lots of things on the calendar … for me, it means lots of anxiety and tension … and these are not conducive for thinking and writing, and so I willingly allowed January to pass, though I had the matter in my head and images for two posts that I wanted to start off with … the first part of February too was anxiety-ridden … there was some scope for hope in January, but it ended in disappointment … despite all the anxiety, tension, and disappointment, there is some clarity now … hopefully, I would be able to put in place what I have in mind … I don’t want to come out on top or anything (those hopes have vaporized permanently …), I just want to stay put … I have survived these small battles in my head with my blog as my battlefield …

250 Posts on this blog ...

This ‘gloat’ post is actually the 252^nd … the third part of the ‘bibliothrillers’ series was the 250^th, but I didn’t want to break the series with a ‘gloat’ post to announce my 250^th to the world … so here it is … I have now written 250 posts on my blog!!

It is a very meagre achievement actually, considering this blog is almost 8 and a half years old … even if I had done one post per week from the beginning, I should have written around 400 posts by now … the first year was really good actually … I was sort of ‘prolific’ and wrote 74 posts … then I thought I’d continue to write with the same pace … I was thrilled that I could write all these posts on a variety of subjects … not a great range really … mostly about fountain pens, books, a few on music, and some on travel … from 74, the number slid down drastically to 24 in the next year, and it was a progressive decline for the subsequent two years – 12 and 10 posts … recovered slightly in the next three years, but maintaining a bleak average of around 22-23 posts a year …

Many a times I felt like surrendering altogether and posting ‘The End,’ but somehow I also felt this blog was one thing that liked doing, however sporadically and that I should continue … so, last year I pulled up my socks, tied my shoelaces tightly, tightened my belt (huh!), and set off on a determined journey to write at least 50 posts by the end of the year … I almost reached there … with 47 posts … another 9 posts and I would have reached 250 last year itself … I was aware of this, but I didn’t want to hurry by posting just about anything … this year didn’t begin with optimism and for two months, I didn’t write anything … and I really wanted to close down this blog … in March I made a tentative restart by putting up a really ‘down and out’ post … and tried to remember the good times I had during my year end trip to Shimoga and wrote three more posts about that visit … April was lost to ‘busyness’ of exams in college and or was it also because it is the cruellest month?

I went to Abids after 6 months and a book that I bought there spurred me on to write a series on ‘bibliothrillers’ … and here I am now …

I realise that most of my posts are sort of ‘essay’ length, and sometimes the narrative flags and sometimes people don’t have the time to read through the entire thing … all fountain pen enthusiasts are not book lovers and all book lovers are not fountain pen enthusiasts … and either of them may not like reading about HMT watches … but what to do, I am like this only … I don’t know who reads my posts or how many read my posts … there are some regular readers, I know … I was also rather touched when a couple of my readers pointed out that I hadn’t been posting for quite some time (during those bleak times) … and then maybe sometime in 2014, rather late, I discovered that my post could be linked to my facebook page … that got my posts a few more readers, going by the likes and some comments … and two book review posts on ‘chai and tea’ actually got published in an online journal thanks to KBS Krishna’s persuasions … that gave me some confidence that my posts are ‘readable’ … and more recently, rather shamelessly, I concede, I also started putting my post links on my linkedin profile page …

So, thank you all my readers for your likes, comments, and ‘view’s … and invisible support … 300 by the year end?  No way … it’s a long way to Tipperary … namma thipparaLLi balu doora …

200 Posts…finally…phew!!

Reaching 200 took a lot of time … the first 50 was quick … the first hundred posts were quite comfortable … then the momentum started flagging … at the beginning of every year, I thought I must reach 200 this year … na, never happened for years … I couldn’t even average 20 posts a year sometimes … and sometimes more than a month elapsed without any posts … not that I didn’t have things to write about – books, music, pens, etc., but couldn’t get to bring myself to write …  I don’t know what it is … maybe, I put too much pressure on myself … cluttered mind, perhaps … middle age worries … mind-numbing job that takes the pith out of me … quite possible … or a combination of these … or sheer confusion about what I should be doing … should I be writing only about books and pens? Or maybe something that happened in my life … the places I visited … I don’t know frankly … so, I keep looking at my blog and tell myself, Oh go on, write something, it’s been a month … look at Vinod … every Friday or Saturday you can be sure that he puts up a post about the books that he found in Abids, or anywhere else … look at Harimohan … Harimohan averages one post a day … they are called real bloggers …  not you … you are an occasional blogger …

Maybe I lack discipline … see, this Tuesday I found 5 books at the second-hand stall near Sangeet … and today is Saturday … I could have put up that post … I am still procrastinating … haven’t taken photos of the books yet …  I completed 200 posts last month, and I could have written this after a couple of days of that … no, but I have thought about how to write this post … composed in my mind, and framed, and re-framed and re-composed and finally ended up writing this …

Oh Jai, tera kuch nahin honewala hai … ha ha ha … bada aaya blogger ban-ne …