Smorgasbord

A Veritable collection of ... anything !

Sunday, April 02, 2006

Me, Myself And The Blog !

Its been a few weeks and a few posts since I empowered my Smorgasbord with push-button publishing. When I started I was not really sure what I was going to blog about. But looking at my posts thus far, its been just about any thought that's on my mind on the day.

And how do thoughts come to be on my mind? Or for that matter, on anybody's mind? Thoughts can be triggered by various kinds of stimulations. To me, its been books that I read, news that I follow, things that bother me or stuff that I genuinely like. Normally, millions of thoughts cross our minds on any given day. Only a few are worth thinking about further. For some of them, we say "hey, that's interesting", but then we just let them slip by, because its hard to retain them until we can put them in black-and-white, they are transient. For example, thoughts can occur while waiting to fall asleep, or while at the john, or while driving. But sometimes, thoughts stay with us. I see that happening with me. Then there is the task of actually building some flesh around the thought and turning it into prose. (Some people do poetry, but that's way beyond me!) It can be pretty time-consuming and tedious but at the same time it can be gratifying as well.

Anybody would want to find out just how many people out there are reading what they post. I too wanted to find out and so I added a sitemeter. But more than the numbers, what fascinates me is from which parts of the world you folks come from. For all I know, you could arrive at my blog by mistake or by pure chance, and don't stick around for more than a minute even. Yet, its pretty interesting to know where you're at.

I get almost no comments on my posts in proportion to the page visits I get. So I asked myself why. And I think I found out why. Now I classify blogs into two types - tangible blogs and intangible blogs. Tangible blogs are those which are directly useful to a reader. I read it and then I can make use of it in my life. This kind of reminds me of a newspaper column called News you can use, almost implying that the other news in the paper is not that useful! Anyway, some examples of tangible blogs I came across are about technology, travelogues, dating advice, spreading a certain faith or belief, and cookery. These are just some examples, but what's common to all these is that the readers can put them to work for themselves, if they want to.

Now for intangible blogs, like mine. See what I write about, atleast thus far. Its about bigger issues, which, on a daily basis, are of no concern to me or anyone else. All of these are about larger, abstract issues and almost newspaper-like. I guess its just what we want to write about, but why would anybody want to read it? My views on a certain issue are fine and dandy, but why would any other person care what they are? What do you think?

Then there is the most common type wherein the blogs are basically random ruminations about the bloggers' daily lives, family, friends, vacations, pets, happiness, frustrations, whatever. Its like an online diary. I wouldn't do that, because I'd be wary of putting out my thoughts in public like that, not to infer that my thoughts are in any way oblique! These blogs are neither tangible nor intangible, these are more for the self than for others.

But somewhere along my short way so far, I started to think less about how many people read what I write. Whether anybody reads or posts a comment or not, I feel I should continue to blog. Because I myself would like to read my posts a few years down the line. Its like a time capsule for my mind, which I can now bury on the servers of Blogger!

The blogging community has some very good ground rules well laid out, which make it work as a vibrant community. Infact, the community culture is the key. The more you read others' blogs and demonstrate that you read them, the more your blog will be read. In the real world, return a favor with a favor. In Blogosphere, return a link with a link! But its not for propriety alone that I give you this link, its also because I feel anyone who has read the most intangible post this far, should get something useful out of it! Also, I plan to follow this blog link regularly, but its a moot point how much use I'll personally make of it! Its up to you what you do. Out here you get a lot of food for thought, if you want some for your tummy, click here!

Back to my blog, looks like the next few weeks, I'll be a bit busy with life, so I'm not sure how regular my posts will be, but I hope I don't take a break from this, ever! Well, maybe not ever, atleast for quite some time to come!

1 Comments:

Blogger Bit Hawk said...

Hey, that was a good post!
Its very surprising why good posts very less, sometimes no comments.

12:01 AM  

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