VOF - 3 "CHALLENGES AND BLOCKS TO BLOGGING"

The major challenge to blogging for me is want of time. I am a professional, fulltime journalist and write all the time for money. So, to be very frank, writing for a blog gets second priority because it does not pay. Besides, the opportunity cost of blogging instead of writing is very high for me. And finding time to blog inspite of all this is the biggest challenge.

I have my personal blog under the title KRAZZZY THOUGHTS on a cinema website called www.upperstall.com. It is relatively recent because I am expected to contribute to my blog for a minimum of once a month. I have made two entries till now and spread the message only with my second entry which got a fabulous feedback from friends far and near both in terms of quality and in terms of quantity. I have the third entry up my sleeve and in my head but have not got down to writing it yet. Blogging for me is letting of steam I cannot in my mainstream journalism. I can write openly about the ethical principles of journalism being violated with impunity by many journalists.

The principal block to blogging is some of the useless and nonsensical feedback I get from readers who have not even read my blog but are responding to it anyway for the sake of responding per se. Since there is no rule for feedback and there cannot be any rules against feedback except the normal ones of decency and etiquette, this will go on for a blogger to know that at least his or her blog is being read.

Another problem for me is that I do not really care for HTML because I really do not understand the way it works. WORD is more user-friendly and systematic and e-mail friendly is what I personally feel though this is debatable because my knowledge about HTML is very limited.

Over the past couple of months, I have learnt that one has to e-mail the link to one’s blog to one’s mail friends so that the message goes across far and wide. I did that for my second input. I was about how, having migrated from Mumbai in the Western extremes of India to Kollkata which touches the Eastern tip, I felt neither here nor there, like a Diaspora Indian who lives in the West and feels he/she belongs neither to the motherland nor to the country of adoption. The feedback as I said, was totally a surprise in a very positive sense. It has infused the confidence in me to go on blogging. As for suggestions to improve the practice and remove its teething problems, I am still studying in the Kindergarten so cannot answer questions aimed at an undergraduate student!