A Note To My Abandoned Blog!

I have been writing for over a decade now. In 2012, I started a blog and went on to garner a lakh page views by 2015. Social media wasn’t as big then as to what it is now, the internet wasn’t a necessity, but rather an accessory and attention span surely was more than what we have today. So I believe I can get a little pat on my back for what I achieved.

 
Come 2016, my blog reached the 200k mark, and then like the abandoned Paper Factory in Jagiroad, Assam, I abandoned my blog. I did write a couple of pieces up until 2021, but that was probably the flickering flame of a dying lamp.

 
So, did I stop writing after 2016? Hell no, in fact, I have been writing an unimaginable volume of work. From academic papers, news stories, features for magazines, websites, academic papers, dissertations, press releases, scripts, concept notes and my favourite pass time, emails, I have been churning out words after words. 

But what I absolutely stopped doing is, writing for myself. Personal writing almost seems like an alien concept, as I began typing this.

 
Reels are today a trend. Blogging too, is quite the trend today. But back then in 2016, blogging was different and then came vlogging and today, a Blogger is essentially a video content creator. Social media today is dictated by numbers; the views you get on your blog, the likes on your post and the shares on your content.

 
But between all of these, we probably lost the thin line between personal and public-centric content. Personal writing, or personal content creation is a very difficult job, considering our systematic conditioning of grabbing more eyeballs. Anything that we put up on the net today is done from the perspective of getting more and more hours of viewership. And that includes this piece as well.

 
Off late, there has been a lot of introspection from my side as to why I stopped writing for myself. Yes, my profession gave me a very mechanical approach to writing content. When you write a press release, you have to represent the organization that you are writing it for, you have to echo its ideology. And seldom it happens so that their views and stand align exactly with yours. Similarly, writing a speech for someone requires you to think like that person, what s/he benefits from the speech and how will that person benefit the occasion for which the speech is written.

 
Similarly, when a news report or a feature is written about, all we think of is what would the readers want to read. And in this process, we often lose the personal chain of thought that we have. And personal writing, slowly takes a backseat, with dust accumulating making things rusty.

 
So, 12 years later, when I think of Pesudofiction, a blog that got 10k views within 11 months of its inception, it kind of surprises me that once there was a version of me that was motivated to write for myself. In fact, I used to write notes to commemorate milestones on the blog. So, this is what I wrote when I reached the 10K mark:

I have seen people write, I have seen people using a Blog to reach out readers, and I always wanted to be one of them. Loneliness in Delhi did the trick, it brought out my desire to write, and once it started, here I am writing and writing. Honestly, I am not awesome of a writer, it started as a fake identity of mine which I turned into my passion. I have a horrible grammar and I am sick of spellings, yet I aspire to be a writer, and this is the limit of my passion. The happiness you get, while receiving a good feedback of your writing, is something heavenly. People say, there is no money here, go get a life, but you see, as people say, something beyond money. (From the Post: 10000 Views: A Note on Why I Write) 

Today is one of the days when I felt like reminding myself as to I was someone who used to write blogs and write about experiences; non commercially and I seem to lose that self of mine.

 
But there is time and power for me to revive myself, unlike the Jagiroad Paper Mill, which is dead. Let this post be a reminder that things can be revived if it is taken care of at the right time. A dead paper mill will not delude a writer from writing, but a dead passion can. Let today be a reminder of that.