VOF Week 3: Dancing Naked in the Rain!

Well, they do say you gotta have a catchy heading if you’re going to join the blog brigade! But seriously, I’ve been rather wary of blogging, and – like dancing naked in the rain – it’s something I’d like to do, only if I could let myself go, but really I’d rather stay in my own safe zone.

My main barrier to blogging is that it requires you to open up, and I’m pretty much a private person. Heck, I’m an extremely private person! And it’s a hard slog to keep up a blog (pardon the rhyme!). These have been reasons enough for me to stay away from the new trend on the block that my friends and colleagues were jumping into during the last 2-3 years.

And then I came across an article in the October 2008 issue of WIRED magazine where Paul Boutin announced the Death of the Blog and I was thrilled to think that I had not been so foolish as to invest my time in something that was so yesterday’s trend.

These meandering thoughts on World Pulse are my first, halting and faltering, attempts at blogging. I’ve cringed as I read some of my entries, but I’m glad I bit the bullet and stepped into the blogosphere! It’s fun, and it’s sort of liberating to start sharing with others, many on the same page and with some things in common. I think the fact that WP was a community of first-time bloggers made me feel less weird and far less gauche.

I certainly haven’t come up with solutions, but I am finding a middle ground between blogging and my instinctive desire for privacy. It’s the place where I share personal thoughts, but with a message, with some level of detachment so that I feel I am commenting on an issue or topic, rather than baring my soul to the world.

I’m also rather tired of blogs that tell you every teeny-weeny detail of people’s lives – and I think that aspect of blogging is better off dead. If you want to put your “dear diary” on the web, that’s fine. But it leaves me bored, or worse, sickened at how frivolous or empty-headed or self-centred people can be. It's worse when you come across blogs that are so obviously written by an ad copywriter.

At the same time, I’ve seen how some blogs can generate discussion, put out appoint of view that is startlingly different. One example is my friend Nalaka’s blogwhich has a regular base of visitors, and which is really one individual’s personal commentary and opinions on a selected range of subjects. And I think that’s the way to go for me too.

Blogging – like any form of writing – continues to evolve, and it’s no longer what it started out to be, as Paul Boutin correctly points out. But it’s far from dead too. No matter how many hired writers and marketing strategists try to hijack the blogosphere, I hope it continues to be a place where real people can spout off, and others will enjoy and be challenged by reading their writings. Dancing naked in the rain is sure to draw a crowd…..!