Release me

Today’s prompt was to highlight that one post from my blog where I thought twice about publishing the same.

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I suffer from this writers’ condition called ‘verbal diarrhoea’ in that I tend to speak my thoughts fairly clearly and loudly, but only to the extent that I tend to be on the ‘safer side of things’ so to speak.

Given that I am fairly moderate with my points of view and opinions, there are very few rare occasions when I end up rubbing too many people the wrong way with my words. And what this means is that on the rare occasion that I publish a post about some controversial topic (which is extremely rare) the post itself will be fairly polished, balanced and all my efforts will be to ensure that as few feathers will be ruffled, if any at all.

Consequently, this also means that when it comes to publishing posts on my blog, there are hardly any, in fact no posts at all which have forced me to have second thoughts about, or any sort of hesitation before I hit on the PUBLISH button.

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This post has been written for Project 365: A post a day where the intention is to publish at least one post a day based on the prompts provided. Today’s prompt, as stated above, was to highlight one post where I thought twice before publishing the same on my blog.

Mutual scratching

Today’s prompt was “What makes a blog great? What makes you follow a blog or Like a post?” And in my opinion, in this day and age when ‘backscratching’ has become quite a formidable phenomenon in the blogging world, this is quite a relevant topic to discuss and this prompt provides me with an opportunity to air my views on the same.

For somebody like me who has been blogging quite actively for the last year or so (although I am a ‘veteran’ in the sense that I started blogging in 2004 well before blogging aggregators such as Blogadda, Indiblogger or blogging cliques such as Indiblogeshwaris came into vogue), the entire concept of ‘backscratching’ is amusing to say the least.

Just to make things clear, by backscratching I am referring to instances where I read the blogs of all the people who follow my blog and leave comments on the posts and in turn follow these blogs and leave comments on the posts on these blogs. This exercise is something that is done irrespective of whether I actually like the other blog, the posts there or not, and such non-judgmental following of blogs and commenting is what I term ‘backscratching’.

While I must confess to having indulged in this in the recent past when I was forced to do so when I was part of a blogging group (due to the rules of engagement in this group), the fact remains that this entire process got so irritating, time-consuming and ultimately pointless that I ended up discontinuing the same and as a result being kicked out of the group.

Today I have reached a stage in life, or a ‘place’ with my writing / blogging that I write for myself and my own consumption. Honestly, I don’t have an ‘intended audience’ in mind when I pen down my posts and write purely for the joy of the entire process of writing by itself. In such a situation, I simply don’t have the time, necessity or the inclination to indulge in the pointless exercise of following as many blogs as I can, read the posts and leave behind my comments on each and every post.

But I digress, and let me get down to addressing the actual prompt which asks me for my reasons for following a blog and liking the posts there.

To me, the main thing that makes me want to follow a blog and comment on the posts there remains content, style and the vibes that the blog and the posts there send off to me. First and foremost, the content dealt with in the blog and the way it is dealt with must resonate with me, my values, my thoughts and in general must be stuff that I like to read about. If somebody were to ask me for a clear-cut list of all the things that I like to read about, I will not be able to provide the same, but suffice to say that most of my reading revolves around non-controversial topics, personal rants and fiction in general. And it therefore follows that these are the type of blogs that I follow and the kind of posts that I like and comment upon.

Having said this, I do have my favorite bloggers / writers who I have followed over the past year and will continue to do so, even if they churn out posts and content which don’t necessarily strike a chord in me. It goes without saying that every writer hits a ‘block’ once in a while and tends to pen down posts which are not in line with their earlier posts. Or it could also be the case that the writer has evolved both as a person and as a writer and has moved on to writing posts in a genre that I don’t necessarily enjoy. In such cases, I tend to stop reading such blogs and stop following them regularly. After all, I am sure that nobody misses one tiny reader and his comments on posts so much that they will go back to writing what I enjoy reading, will they?

In a similar vein, I have noticed that my blog also has its own share of regular readers and commenters and based on the content, quality and frequency of comments on my posts it is a safe assumption that these are readers who currently enjoy what I write, who resonate well with the thoughts that I present there and provide their genuine feedback and thoughts in the form of comments on the posts themselves. To these readers, here’s my heartfelt gratitude and thanks. When I started off blogging all those years ago, little did I imagine that there would be more than a handful of people who would actually go on to read and even enjoy what I have to write on this blog.

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This post has been written for Project 365 : A post a day where the objective is to publish at least one post a day based on the prompts provided.