Why I Blog(ged)

My last post was in February. I don't think I've spent such a long time away from my blog. Ever. It's not that I really don't have the time. Blogging doesn't take too much time. And it's not as if I don't come online. I do that almost every day - night rather. So what kept me away?

I started blogging in August 2004, when I was slogging it out alone in Coimbatore. I had just about joined my present company, and I was shipped out to Coimbatore, a place I had last been to when I still wore shorts to school. There was nothing to do, nowhere to go, and nobody to be with. That's when I came across the world of blogs. Here was something new. Write just about anything you want to, and keep it open for just about the whole world to read. Imagine, suddenly your world is populated with people who aren't even in your part of the universe. I had a personal diary back then- that I still have the same personal diary with more than half of it empty is testament to how regular I was/am - but this was the other side of the earth! Write about your deeply personal life, and leave it out there! In the open! The comfort of being anonymous in virtual world. And the chance of making new friends, without the barrier of geographic space coming in between. So I started my blog in rediff. And here are the last few lines from my very first post:

"I am going to try to find adventure and life - no matter how commonplace or routine things probably are. I walk down the same street every morning to office. I get up on the same side of bed with the same odd dry feeling in my throat. I eat at the same place atleast once a day. The same boy serves me my breakfast. I get my tea at the same teashop at the corner. And darn me if i don't see the same faces as i do daily. Whatever, i am going to see if i can find something worth writing and posting. And if i can prompt you, my reader, to look into your own life and see if you couldn't do the same without thinking that life is just 'ok, nothing new, all the same as yesterday', then i should think that my fingers aren't going crazy by typing for nothing."

Five years from then, nothing's the same anymore. New place, new people, one of them new-born. Is it that I find nothing interesting anymore? Is it that I get no time to stand and stare? Is it that I don't feel lonely anymore? Did I start blogging to stop feeling lonely? The answers aren't all a 'yes'. My blogging was a way out of loneliness, and I don't feel that anymore. My world is full now. And I find it hard to keep a watch on Time flying by on his winged chariot. But my world is still interesting. What I see out there, whenever I get to go out, is still interesting. I guess I just needed some time to see what this new life was like.

My friend recently asked me if marriage and fatherhood had left me with no time for myself. My answer was an overwhelming yes. I wonder if that is true though. I think I can still make time. I think I still want to blog.