Last month, I completed five years of blogging.

Naturally, I went back to see what had happened to the blog that had originally inspired me to start one of my own – Rajesh Jain’s Emergic.org.

If you’ve been following my blog, you will know that this past year has been an eventful one for me, to say the least.  As a result, I’ve not been able to keep pace with the XML feeds of some my frequently-read blogs, as much as I would’ve liked.  And, the Emergic blog has been one of them, especially in light of the sheer volume of writing put out by Rajesh, day after day.  That is why I was surprised to come across this post on Emergic:

It has been an extraordinarily long break from blogging. After six years of daily updates, I took a break last June-end, necessitated by a bout of influenza which left me bed-ridden for a couple weeks. Around the same time, work became very busy. Also, my son, Abhishek, (growing from 2 to 3 years) made sure that mornings and evenings were his time with me. And, I had just gotten bored of the format of one weekly Tech Talk series (which was becoming repetitive) and giving links to interesting articles. So, I stopped – hoping for a magical makeover and some inspiration! That never happened – until now.

This time around, I will blog more on what I think – rather than giving only the links. So, the posts will be less frequent, but hopefully more meaningful. I have also migrated the blog from MovableType to WordPress. All in all, time for a new beginning.

As it turned out, I hadn’t missed all that much.  Coincidentally, in that time, my friend Rajesh had also moved his blog to WordPress, like I had done only last month!  The best part of it all was that the Emergic blog was off to a fresh start – hopefully, less volume more insights – leaving no excuse to keep up with it, every day…

I also took a peek at the other blog I most frequently-read – MetroDad.  His was the dad-blog that reaffirmed my efforts to continue writing on parenting and fatherhood, whenever I wondered if there was any audience for it.  To my surprise, I discovered that the MD blog was also on a trip down memory lane, having completed four years of dad-blogging:

When I first started this blog, I never really believed that anyone would be interested in hearing a guy blather on about fatherhood… After all, let’s face it. We still live in a world where men are not really encouraged to discuss their inner feelings. Most of us just don’t want to hear about it.

But four years, ten pounds, and two colonoscopies later here I am. Still standing.

In fact, this is my 337th post. It’s hard to believe. 337 times I’ve released my mental diarrhea out into the public arena. Who knew I even had that much to say?

If any of you have attempted blogging, you’ll know how tough it is to maintain one.  For all the technology out there that’s made it easier to publish your thoughts on the Web, “keeping at it” takes effort and time, and is easier said than done.  One estimate I’d come across recently, stated that over 90% of blogs that are started on various popular platforms do not go past three posts, and lie dormant thereafter.

It all begs the question: Why do I blog?  MetroDad offers an insight:

Since its inception, this blog has been my own personal soapbox. It not only serves as a place for me to transcribe my personal journey into fatherhood but also lets me vent about the truly important issues of the day that seriously affect all of us.

Not unlike MetroDad’s own experience, writing through this blog has offered me an avenue to do two things:

1. Speak about the things that really matter to me as an individual, and

2. Maintain a log of my years as a parent, so that my two little children have the benefit of knowing what their childhood was like, and what their parents were all about – something, I did not have the opportunity to know growing up.

Five years and 244 posts later, there doesn’t seem to be much of a decision to make.  Is there an option but to continue blogging?!