{"id":360,"date":"2008-04-01T13:15:27","date_gmt":"2008-04-01T07:45:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/naveen.bachwani.com\/blog\/?p=360"},"modified":"2008-04-01T13:15:27","modified_gmt":"2008-04-01T07:45:27","slug":"five-years-of-blogging","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/naveen.bachwani.com\/greymatter\/2008\/04\/five-years-of-blogging\/","title":{"rendered":"Five Years of Blogging"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Last month, I completed five years of blogging.<\/p>\n<p>Naturally, I went back to see what had happened to the blog that had originally inspired me to <a href=\"http:\/\/naveen.bachwani.com\/greymatter\/2003\/03\/01\/emergic-freedom\/\">start one of my own<\/a> &#8211; Rajesh Jain&#8217;s Emergic.org.<\/p>\n<p>If you&#8217;ve been following my blog, you will know that this past year has been an eventful one for me, to say the least.\u00a0\u00a0As a result, I&#8217;ve not been able to keep pace with the XML feeds of some my frequently-read blogs, as much as I would&#8217;ve liked.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 That is why I was surprised to come across <a href=\"http:\/\/emergic.org\/2008\/02\/05\/a-fresh-start\/\" target=\"_blank\">this post<\/a> on Emergic:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>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 \u2013 hoping for a magical makeover and some inspiration! That never happened \u2013 until now.<\/p>\n<p>This time around, I will blog more on what I think \u2013 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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>As it turned out, I hadn&#8217;t missed all that much.\u00a0 Coincidentally, in that time, my friend Rajesh had also moved his blog to WordPress, like I had done only last month!\u00a0 The best part of it all was that the Emergic blog was off to a fresh start &#8211; hopefully, less volume <em>more insights<\/em> &#8211; leaving no excuse to keep up with it, every day&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>I also took a peek at the other blog I most frequently-read &#8211; <a href=\"http:\/\/metrodad.typepad.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">MetroDad<\/a>.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 To my surprise, I discovered that the MD blog was also on a trip down memory lane, having completed <a href=\"http:\/\/metrodad.typepad.com\/index\/2008\/03\/patria-potestas.html\" target=\"_blank\">four years of dad-blogging<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>When I first started this blog, I never really believed that anyone would be interested in hearing a guy blather on about fatherhood&#8230; After all, let&#8217;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&#8217;t want to hear about it.<\/p>\n<p>But four years, ten pounds, and two colonoscopies later here I am. Still standing.<\/p>\n<p>In fact, this is my 337th post. It&#8217;s hard to believe. 337 times I&#8217;ve released my mental diarrhea out into the public arena. Who knew I even had that much to say?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>If any of you have attempted blogging, you&#8217;ll know how tough it is to maintain one.\u00a0 For all the technology out there that&#8217;s made it easier to publish your thoughts on the Web, &#8220;<em>keeping at it<\/em>&#8221; takes effort and time, and is easier said than done.\u00a0 One estimate I&#8217;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.<\/p>\n<p>It all begs the question: <em>Why do I blog?<\/em>\u00a0 <a href=\"http:\/\/metrodad.typepad.com\/index\/2008\/03\/patria-potestas.html\" target=\"_blank\">MetroDad<\/a> offers an insight:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Not unlike MetroDad&#8217;s own experience, writing through this blog has offered me an avenue to do two things:<\/p>\n<p>1. Speak about the things that really matter to me as an individual, and<\/p>\n<p>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 &#8211; something, <em>I<\/em> did not have the opportunity to know growing up.<\/p>\n<p>Five years and 244 posts later, there doesn&#8217;t seem to be much of a decision to make.\u00a0 Is there an option but to <em>continue<\/em> blogging?!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[11],"class_list":["post-360","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","tag-technology"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naveen.bachwani.com\/greymatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naveen.bachwani.com\/greymatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naveen.bachwani.com\/greymatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naveen.bachwani.com\/greymatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naveen.bachwani.com\/greymatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=360"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naveen.bachwani.com\/greymatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naveen.bachwani.com\/greymatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naveen.bachwani.com\/greymatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naveen.bachwani.com\/greymatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}