first gear

TO B(log) or not TO B(log)

It must have been about 7-8 months back when I accidently stumbled upon ‘The Blog’, while trying to locate a long lost friend. A quick trip to the dictionary and a few discreet inquires (shockingly) revealed that the phenomenon was in fact a decade old…. (Nothing new for me… one who remains in the dark ages of the technological time line, most of the time)

What amazed me was the fact, that people wanted to put up ‘personal trivia for public display '(quote exact words told to a friend) and since then have been looking for a definitive answer to why people blog……

Do people write to express or they express to be read……..can one write naturally without pretense knowing fully well the fact that their emotions are put up on the world’s display window…..sorry to be so cynical but, the questions are but natural for any new born…..(reference…late entry into blogging).
Call it peer pressure or e pressure, a sudden spontaneous overflow of feelings ……ahem…..creativity (I know that’s Mr. Wordsworth’s), or may be just a desire to connect and reach across with words, which are informative, inspiring and (sometimes !!) intuitive. Pardon me if I’m metaphorically incorrect, but the blog seems to be ones ‘creative virtual offspring’ …..you conceive the posts (sometimes) in seconds, see a part of you in it….proudly watch it growing…….recommend it to others…….(they way parents flaunt their kids’ newly developed developmental skills)…compare it ….…and of course expect people to compliment(comment on)…it.
Well, time went by and the inevitable happened….I steadily and unquestionably got addicted to reading about the private and the not so private ‘lively…lifely’ details of friends and strangers and have to admit ,marvelled at peoples' ability to transform feelings and experiences into words ……
The desire to peep into the lives of friends through their blogs is indeed addictive………the pressure to comment intelligently…….challenging, but, above all the desire to stay connected and communicate is alluring!
Yes, I have been pretty skeptical and apprehensive about writing one of my own, despite words of encouragement offered by friends…..to join the league…!!!BLOGGERS INC!
for one…… revelation doesn’t come naturally to me…..especially when expressed in the written form. Probably like they say, when you lose one of your senses the others become stronger…..antonym(ically) true….for the excess of verbal gaffe….has induced the above mentioned deficiency ….second and most important…..the Macbethian dagger(read pressure) of being an English teacher looms large over me……for I confess(and my students will agree) that words don’t come easily ,I thrive on Gulzar ,Nida Fazli,Shakespeare,Hemmingway and Rushdie and O Henry and Maupassant, but possess no ability to create magical lines of either prose or verse, and often wobble when writing, supported by the crutches of a dictionary and now of MS word.
But, can and will write with honesty and simplicity……candidly and probably in language that’s as plain Jane as ME!!!
Apprehensive and unsure…am still looking for reasons as to why people blog….
Till I can find substantial, raison d'être that can put me at rest…have succumbed to bloggers’ pressure
For it is better to have written and expressed than not to have written at all…...