My previous post on the books haul at Hyderabad Book Fair was my 300thpost 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.