Saturday, April 18, 2009

The Blogging phenomenon

I had been long aware of the existence of weblogs in this universe. A number of years ago, when the concept of blogs sprouted like mushrooms after the rain, I was not impressed. I read somewhere that a blog is a "public diary" of an individual, where one can post just about anything for the whole world to see.
"Nay", I thought. "I would not want the whole world to see what my immediate family is not allowed to know."
I did not realise then that I had hit the nail on the head. A blog is meant to consist of stuff that the whole world reads and shares, many a time not even known to the family, unless they are visitors of the blog too!

"Why would anyone want to post their feelings and thoughts to the world at large, to be read by people one hardly knows exist?", the skeptic in me thought, as I pondered over blogs that reviewed the events of the places closest to the author, his/her analysis and opinion on some or other instance that meant nothing to me.

A bit of this stolid mentality was blown to bits by my friend who has been in the blogworld for about two years. When I began following hers, I wanted to create a blog of my own, more to give expressions to the cluttered thoughts which are aplenty in my mind than for the public eye.

I began following other blogs also by known and unknown people, which I found interesting (my regular visits can be found in the blogroll in the right pane under "Blogs I read"). There are others that I read however there is a probationary period before they qualify to get into my blogroll (Ignore the arrogance - I cannot show it anywhere else!). Many bloggers write and discuss specific topics of their interest, whereas some others (like me) write about anything under the sun. What keeps me in a blog and ensures I return is most definitely the topic. If the writing is elegant, the subject can be anything or nothing, it matters not. Intentionally or otherwise, I began leaving footprints at the pages I visit, leading others to come to my world. I had arrived.

The Blogroll ("Blogs I read") is a great concept, wherein I do not have to explicitly visit a blog every day to know if there are updates, I only need to keep my eye open and tilted to the right to see if a blog has come to the top of the list with a new post title.

Recently I was pleasantly surprised to find my blog mentioned in two of the blogs I closely follow: TheSixChix.com and Written Inc.

Perhaps the first blog (after my friend's) that I bookmarked and began visiting regularly was Sandra Bell-Lundy's Between Friends blog. I am an unconditional fan of Between Friends cartoon strips which I read every day in the Times of India - Bangalore Times, and every day find myself amazed at how the occurences in the lives of Susan(especially), Kim and Maeve are similar to my own. I have this habit of googling around for information whenever I find something interesting. So I stumbled upon her blog and never left it since. She introduced Book Lust, the Six Chix and Nellie Blog. I found the Weekly Story Book from Nellie blog, which I found very useful as it provided bedtime stories for my son - a new one every week! - because I was tired of inventing stories every night.

Comments? Now that you get my areas of interest, any blogs you recommend?

1 comment:

  1. Glad to have you visiting! And, yes, Sandra's blog is a daily stop for me, too.

    Mike (nellieblogs, WeeklyStoryBook)

    ReplyDelete