Why I Still Blog, Seven Years Later

It's my seventh blog birthday and I'm sitting rather dumbly in front of my computer wondering what I should say. It's a Saturday, a day when no one seems to notice a blog or even a Facebook status, and mine, even less.

I continue to blog - yes, I still do, even if it's a pitiful one post a month nowadays - at a time when life is getting busier and harder and there seems to be lesser time for pleasurable pursuits. I blog in an era when utterly addictive social media have crowded our lives and no one seems to have the time to read blogs. I continue to blog despite falling visitor statistics and comments. I continue to blog even as the blogs of talented fellow bloggers have fallen silent. I persist even as my friends and readers seem to have less and less to say on my blog. Sometimes they don't have much to say on their own either. I struggle to involve myself in my friends' blogs when they don't talk to me as much as they did earlier.

I continue to blog even though I do not read much more than the same blogs I used to. I blog even as my friends tell me their time is too valuable to spend on the computer, on the Internet. (But I see that they can't stay away.) I blog even as bloggers I like tell me they do not want to get involved with other Indian bloggers as they are political. I blog even though I do not/cannot/am too lazy to market my blog.

I blog even though I don't always eat exotic, seasonal, local, home-grown or organic produce, and my food does not always turn golden on cooking. I blog even though the oil never seems to separate or leaves the sides of the pans. I blog despite knowing little about my tradition. I write despite my blog's lack of clear positioning and classification.

I blog even though I feel jaded. I blog a 1,000 words stubbornly; my photos are no paragons of beauty. I blog because there is some flickering, undying hope that it will lead me to what I want it to lead me to. Above all, I blog because it's sanctuary, the one activity that occupies me completely, when the rest of my life fades out entirely. (Of course, it comes flooding back soon enough.) Blogging is one of the very few things in my current life I like doing wholeheartedly. And giving up on it out of a sense of futility real or imagined would be like giving up on life itself.

Thank you, dear readers and bloggers, for still spending time on my blog. Here's wishing you all get all the time you want to put up your feet a bit more and do the things that make you happy.

And now for some less heavy reading. Here are my previous anniversary posts:

First
Second
Third
Fourth
Fifth
Sixth

And here are some resources on why blogging still matters

http://www.problogger.net/archives/2013/08/30/is-blogging-still-relevant-in-a-world-of-social-media-6-reasons-why-i-think-it-is/

http://1000heads.com/2013/05/why-blogs-still-matter/

http://www.becomingminimalist.com/15-reasons-i-think-you-should-blog/

And why there's a place for blogs that write rather than shoot
http://lifesafeast.blogspot.in/2013/09/lets-talk-writing.html

And a blog that I like to think I had a bit to do with, in terms of prodding the blogger to start/not delay blogging:

http://viewfromthetopofthetank.blogspot.in/

Musings Anniversary On blogging