Milestones ...

I started this blog three and a half months ago. Some milestones for this blog were quietly passed this week.

The number of posts passed 400. The number of visitors crossed 5,000. The number of countries from where visitors have come crossed 75. The blog has received a Google ranking, of 5/10. The number of profile views crossed 2,000. And about 20 bloggers have me on their blog-roll.

If this is “good”, then I’m pleased! And if it’s nothing significant, then that does not change anything. I’ve done something, and this has been the result.

For me this means that if I am trying to do something through this blog, I have been fortunate to get a quick and sizeable response, enough to encourage me to press on, in full earnest, towards something “meaningful”.

The blog was started suddenly, out of the blue, with no plan or expectation. As far as writing or communicating is concerned, its early days yet. Its only in very few posts that I have come anywhere near communicating from a deep personal space of self-awareness, expression and purpose.

But in terms of process – well, what can one say! Each month has brought completely unanticipated new outcomes, awareness and realisation. Life, and blogging, merge. The question is for each to be transformative of the other!

The sense of a completely new life and world being made through the internet and blog-sphere.

I’m fed by some loyal, regular visitors who come. They are from diverse places, backgrounds, ages, professions and persuasions. I do not take their interest for granted, and am unfailingly overwhelmed by their tracks on my site-meter, or their comments. Some have become “friends”, through off-blog e-mails, or even just through the comments box. With some, its only an occasional comment, and with some others entirely silence; but there’s an underlying sense of a bond. I have a feeling of liking, admiration, affection, warmth, goodwill, kin-ship for my readers. I’m also a regular reader and admirer of their blogs.

If / when I travel somewhere, there is the possibility of meeting them. That is a heart-warming prospect.

I have done nothing so far besides posting. To my mind, the aspects involved in a blog are:

Writing

Communicating

Creative linkage

Information management

Commerce

Reading blogs, discovering blogs, communicating with other bloggers – is a vital part of keeping a blog. I’ve been doing this, but on the whole I’ve been more attuned to writing than to reading.

Of the five aspects listed above, I’ve done mainly the first, and a little bit of the next two. But I’ve become stubbornly averse - like the sluggish silted river that flows along my city, and coming from a deep sense of inadequacy and fear - to making myself more savvy vis-à-vis computing. Hence reluctance to taking up some basic, intelligent information management tasks (though I’ve discovered a few clues from time to time). Blogging has been a crude, rough-hewn craft for me. Hence I don’t have a blog-roll, or a subject-wise archive - because I haven’t been up to getting into that task, learning how to do it, and executing it. I also realise that the absence of such features can also be a dis-service to the blog’s visitors and readers.

I have been struck off and on by the question of e-commerce possibilities via my blog. For instance, when I discuss something, there could be links to buy books, music, films, or travel etc. I am not interested right now in raising money through this blog – but even as I write this I think I could always use the money for the slum community development efforts I’m engaged in; I also think that "splogs" could use my blog to earn!

All these are completely different functions, and an individual may have the inclination for more than one, or all, or only one! So perhaps the ideal thing would be for a blog to be a team effort, with members bringing in different drives.

But for now, I will continue to see my blog as writing / communicating, and focus on that.

The plane has only been revving its engine so far. Flight is awaited!