On Blogging

Blogs, how much ever personal or "from the heart" or "my space, no one else's" spirit they are started with, soon become an audience pleasing exercise. Initially, the audience will be less, and your spirit to write will be high. Down the line, both trends reverse. People soon start looking for interesting topics to blog about, etc. They go on trips and watch movies with this purpose in mind. This, if it was for a magazine or newspaper with a fixed aim (like money or political), would have worked fine (that's their aim), but for an individual blogger, blogging "just for fun", it soon means that "he is being watched", "he should write well", "the audience may not like it", "this topic does not fit into this blog and its audience". These pressures work out differently for different people: I normally end up hating my blog.

The audience is not the problem: acceptance (and may be commaderie) is a major aim of writing blogs. I am not interested in writing a closed-to-all blog, which only I can read. Audience affecting the author becomes a problem. The initial idea of blogging just for fun will change, and different people accept this differently.

The dynamic nature of blogging, where we just type something and press "save", without the strong thought and the endless re-reading and re-writing process of an "article" (say for a magazine), tend to end up as "informal" "rants". Blogs are written instantaneously, and I wounder how much "insight" we can get from such a form of writing. They capture so much of the emotion of the moment of writing, and may be it is like a diary; just to mark our stray and fleeting thoughts. I mostly blog on stray thoughts rather than my few time tested opinions.

If all you wanted was to share your opinion, another way to do it would be to use static websites or blogs without commenting option. Some people choose this option, and perhaps its a good choice to remain detached from the blog.

Lets see what will happen to this blog. I want to give it only a "second rate" importance, just as a once in a while hobby, so that it wont end up affecting me and my emotions. I am trying to be brave, and enabling the comments for the blog for the time being.