Most people live the live of quiet desperation, so said James Joyce, though some say he didn't. But that originator of the wise quote is immaterial; what is truly important, is that in the winter of 2011, In a sudden urge to try to re-claim my old self, I sat myself down to write together essays on various thoughts which occupy my mind, thoughts which have been floating across my mind, like clouds on a faintly clearer sky.
I used to be pretty good with words when I would write the poems of longing when as a young man, as any young man of that age and time would, with future more or less certain with an engineering degree in sight (the great middle class dream so well lampooned by many including Chetan Bhagat), was most likely to do; that is, looking for love.
This was later followed up by a courtship running though more than six years or so, mostly through semi-poetical love letters written to the love sought and received in the person of my then girlfriend and now wife and mother of my child as was most common those days, when PDA(Public Display of Affection) was not a national issue.
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I used to be pretty good with words when I would write the poems of longing when as a young man, as any young man of that age and time would, with future more or less certain with an engineering degree in sight (the great middle class dream so well lampooned by many including Chetan Bhagat), was most likely to do; that is, looking for love.
This was later followed up by a courtship running though more than six years or so, mostly through semi-poetical love letters written to the love sought and received in the person of my then girlfriend and now wife and mother of my child as was most common those days, when PDA(Public Display of Affection) was not a national issue.
Once I sat down to write, "If Truth were to be Told", to my horror, I sat staring at the blank screen for such a long time that for a while, I felt that I could never be able to write anything beyond dry office memos filled up with acronyms like ASAP, FYI, EBD so on and so forth, ration list or technical proposals on cloud computing and like. I had always knew that I fought best when my back was against the wall. Almost furious at my loss of ability to write, I wrote and wrote with a sense of revenge and retribution. The world of self-publishing offered an avenue to place the book up to wider audience. The sale was pathetic, to be very kind about it. To say it did not matter would be a blatant lie, it did matter as I sought solace in the fact that Schopenhauer sold thirty two copies.Which author did not want his words to be read, rubbing it in further, was that after enough cajoling, none of the friends some of whom read the book through offered paperback or e-Book agreed to put in a review (except for some kind souls who did it in the very begining). That I later got a kind review from an online reviewer of great analytic ability, Ms. Lubna Kabli and from someone whose identity I am not able to locate, (with nick name YoYo) who posted a kind review on the Amazon site of the book, is another story and at the moment, I can leave it with sincere gratitude to the two benevolent persons who did their bit to uplift sinking soul of a moon-lighting author.
That set me read a large number of advices floating around on dear google. Many of them advised blogging as a non-intrusive and sensible way to get readers interested in what you have written. So I went on to Hubpages, then to Wordpress and eventually to a dedicated blog, here on google.
Somewhere in the process the objective, the hidden agenda, of leading the unsuspecting blog readers to the book, lost relevance as I started blogging on multiple subjects. Still struggling to find a name for the blog, whose current name I am still not too happy with (Any suggestions on this is more than welcome), I am back on the blog, every week. I use this blog to re-discover my thoughts, to re affirm my faith in my faculty of clear thinking and clear writing, to use it a means to cleanse my soul of the pain that life keeps on inflicting on me from time to time. It gives me a platform to converse, bulwark to measure myself, my dedication and my discipline against. Struggling to find the common theme, I stumbled on to a George Orwell who defined four reasons that one write, (Sheer Egoism, Historical Impulse, Aesthetic Enthusiasm and Political Purpose).
Further adding to confusion, I could see that I write for a mix of all those reasons, Historical Impulse being a largest proportion in the mixed intent with my progeny at the moment too young to understand what I write (or think), only to be followed by Aesthetic Enthusiasm, and also to see if my fingers have not lost their cunning (to quote from David Ogilvy) which would probably be an intent close to Sheer Egoism.
I have read experts telling me that the sheer number of visitors to the blog is of no consequence, till you have found some repeat offenders who keep coming back to your blog again and again, subscribe to your blog, thereby proclaiming they love your thoughts and would love to know what you have been thinking over the last week.
That said, crossing ten thousand hits, is a milestone, which is encouraging, and substantiating the trust I placed on my writing and universality of my thoughts and concerns. I thank those who landed on it even accidentally, and hope eventually I will have people reaching on this blog, repeatedly, week after week; people who will also talk to me. I celebrate ten thousandth reader with gratitude, anticipation and hope. Thanks to those who came with intent of reading, to those who eventually left their mark on my blog with comments and by being followers, and request to those who accidently land up on these pages to stay back a while and read, may be you will like it. Buyoed by ten who followed and ten thousand who visited surreptously, I will continuously write, hoping to follow a weekly regimen. To quote, Ernest Hemingway, "There is nothing to writing, all you need to do is sit down on a typewriter and Bleed" well, so I promise to sit down on my laptop, every week and well, bleed.
I have read experts telling me that the sheer number of visitors to the blog is of no consequence, till you have found some repeat offenders who keep coming back to your blog again and again, subscribe to your blog, thereby proclaiming they love your thoughts and would love to know what you have been thinking over the last week.
That said, crossing ten thousand hits, is a milestone, which is encouraging, and substantiating the trust I placed on my writing and universality of my thoughts and concerns. I thank those who landed on it even accidentally, and hope eventually I will have people reaching on this blog, repeatedly, week after week; people who will also talk to me. I celebrate ten thousandth reader with gratitude, anticipation and hope. Thanks to those who came with intent of reading, to those who eventually left their mark on my blog with comments and by being followers, and request to those who accidently land up on these pages to stay back a while and read, may be you will like it. Buyoed by ten who followed and ten thousand who visited surreptously, I will continuously write, hoping to follow a weekly regimen. To quote, Ernest Hemingway, "There is nothing to writing, all you need to do is sit down on a typewriter and Bleed" well, so I promise to sit down on my laptop, every week and well, bleed.
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