Blogging, coz I love to do it

At this point of time, I’m not sure why did I even start blogging. I recall starting a blogspot blog and writing down my thoughts and experiences on it. Then, I started FinixPost.com

For a while, I used it to share my experiences. Then, it started working. People started contacting me for sponsored posts. I started getting free stuff. It was all like a dream.

Then, I finished my college. Life happened to me. Amidst the confusion of what I wanted to do, the insecurities attached with working for your own self and working from home, I forgot why I became a blogger.

It became more about writing things people would read, than writing what I wanted to share. Of course, this wasn’t the sole reason behind the failure of my blog. I shifted my focus. I always loved public speaking and hence, YouTube was another platform I got involved with. I started making videos. I started focusing there. And then, it happened.

You see, the problem with building a glass castle is it will break some day.

It did, for me. Suddenly, I didn’t know what I was doing. Why was I blogging? Is it for the money? Is writing blog posts to attract and impress more people on the internet why I blog? Do I have to keep doing that?

As my heart screams ‘no’, my brain cajoles me to look on the other side – if I stop caring about my audience and start writing about anything, how will I get traffic, make money?

I think it was the success that harmed me so much. Had I never succeeded with my blog and YouTube channel once, I would have still stuck to my personal vision and done things that I really enjoyed.

Once you succeed, it’s hard to imagine yourself failing. It’s hard to give yourself the opportunity to fail.

Once my blog got a readership, it became all about them. The blog, supposed to be all about me, became about what audience may like reading and what brands maybe impressed with.

I wasn’t thinking of what new I wanted to share. I was thinking – what can I share that will rank on search engine results, get traffic, and impress a brand enough to sponsor my next post.

I don’t know how people do it but it’s a pathetic way to be. I love writing, I know that for sure. The relief I get once I put down some thought, any thought in the words and read it, it’s unmatchable.

I want to document my life, my thoughts and my experiences. The way I can relive my past memories with the food and book reviews I did, the way I can relive the petty arguments with my friends by reading the posts that I wrote after getting inspired from those arguments, the way I document my thoughts on subjects – it just makes me feel free. It makes me feel good.

So, when I stop myself from doing that as my brain is screaming ‘think of the readers, traffic & money’ – I just feel unmotivated. I lose my will to write. I go to sleep.

The story repeats itself every morning… it has been. And I am trying to change that. I know I have to stop considering what my brain is saying. I have to start doing what my heart says – do anything that goes with my original vision.

Maybe, write a photo post about my three trips to Goa, and how those secret trips made me experience so much.

Write a post about my travels to different places – McLeodganj, Jaipur, Delhi, Goa, Manipal, Chandigarh, Dehradun – even if I don’t have some fancy pictures to go with it.

Write a post documenting my love for books, my journey on my booktube channel, my thoughts on various books – even when I cannot find a suitable ‘SEO-worthy’ title for them.

Write a post on the random story that popped up in my head, without fearing that someone may steal the idea of a book that I may or may not write in future.

Write a post about my feelings about some relatives and friends, without fearing that I’ll be judged and whether I should even share them.

In the art, going bare is considered one of the most liberating and supreme form of arts. (Yep! I didn’t even research on that, I made that up but I bet it’s true). It’s hard to do that. While there are people who would comment on a woman’s bare body shot and try to bring her down on the grounds of shame and morality, somebody like me is just full of pure admiration for such women who can free themselves from the shackles of this society and rise above. And going bare isn’t just associated with unclothing yourself. It’s a term associated with every art form – writing, most of all.

Those painful and heart wrenching books exist because a person decided to go bare on the pages of those books. Somebody decided to pen down their purest expressions in the form of words; free from the fear of being judged, accepted or liked.

It’s hard to do but that’s what I want to do with my blog. That’s why, every day, when I wake up, I think of starting again and never stopping after that. That’s why I try hard to find myself again… in a form where I don’t care about the traffic, the recognition, the money…

I have worked like that, like I did when I worked seriously on my booktube channel. I stopped caring about views and covering popular topics. Rather, I worked hard to think what I want to do and did that. I stopped sharing and blasting people with my video updates. Instead, I patiently waited for people to discover me.

Now, the platforms are different. I could still get discovered on YouTube that way but it’s almost impossible for that to happen with a self-hosted blog. But that’s the whole point – distancing myself from the slightest desires of fame, recognition and money through my blog… and actually, blogging because I love to do it.