My (blog) baby is turning a teenager soon

For the longest time, I had written at least one post every month. This should be the leanest year for Journalost. Nothing after Jan. Chupree and I did start another blog this year – to write about the books we read. jabreads.wordpress.com. But I shouldn’t have ignored the about-to-be-a-teen blog!

I can actually remember sitting and typing the first blog post. It was my brother Nish’s computer and I began dominating it when he left for the US only months before. I also remember a bet with my friend Qwerty who said that I won’t take the blog to more than ten posts. He was one of the first to say I could write, when we used to exchange long emails – or I sent long emails and he replied in one-liners. He probably brought on the bet so the long outpourings will go to a blog and not on his inbox.

Then was the time to make blogger friends. There were a few regulars in Kerala then – if you visited one, you ended up visiting all the others. Silverine, Mathew, Kochuthresiamma (RIP KT :(), Philip, Dhanya, Usha… There would be comments, discussions, debates. And then Facebook came and destroyed it all. Everyone wrote their blog entries as Facebook posts. People liked opening Facebook but not taking the pains to go open blogs and read boring long posts, much like this one. So we suffered, we lost our readers. We are nearly extinct. Of course, you don’t count the popular celebrity blogs. They are just lucky and talented. No big deal. Non-talent is the new cool. Some day, it would be recognized and then it would be too late. You watch.

There was a time I tried to make an income out of blogs. On the advise of a friend and entrepreneur Anoop John, I began multiple blogs, tried varied topics that would be searched on google and bring me new readers who would then click the google ads I put on my pages and help me make millions. It stopped at 75 dollars which I didn’t get, ‘cause Google back then said you need to make at least a 100 dollars to get it in your address. I fell into journalism and forgot about money making through blogs. It was good while the idle dream lasted – that writing could make me rich.

But I continued writing the blog through the journalism days. It meant something.

A recurring character, imaginary pal Jim, had fans! (Well two fans but someone had famously said number is just an age). I tried to claim I am funny, that I am one of those rare women who could write humour. (Lots of women write humour but claims, like dreams, have no limits).

I also had some recurring themes like trains, narrating in another voice (that of a baby once, and a stomach, and a cockroach too I think). Boy, it was a fun ride. Is, not was. I don’t plan to stop. I just need to remember.

Sigh, my baby is going to be a teenager in February. I can cry.