Another Milestone- 3/500

Certain occasions often prove to be unnerving. Since the past couple of days I’d been growing panicky trying to come up with plausible excuses to explain away my inability to write a better post on this significant occasion. Late last night I realized that the occasion could itself be the excuse. Completing three years of the blog with five hundred posts on it is an achievement worth crowing about especially if one works for the government. But I am still unable to understand that I was able to do something like that. I’m still wondering how I spent three years writing five hundred posts as if writing a novel since four years wasn’t enough agony. The 500th post is going to be about the experience of blogging and other related stuff.

The single most important thing I have learnt in my three years of blogging experience is that it isn’t easy. At least, that has been my experience. No sooner than I finished putting a post that’s taken me a couple of days to write than the anxiety about the next post begins. It doesn’t help that one isn’t a particularly talented or experienced writer. It takes time and effort to write an interesting post both of which I seem to have in abundance except for the writing talent. When I started the blog in 2007 I did not expect that I would be still at it three years later. I’m still undecided whether to go on or put a stop to it. I’m going to think about it during a week-long break I want to take from blogging.


Even if no one were reading my blog I would have gone ahead posting stuff on it week after week without fail. But since the blog got noticed by a few regular readers (which I think of as nothing less than a miracle) I must acknowledge my gratitude to all of them for encouragingly lulling me into the feeling that I am a writer. Uma had once asked me to do a post on the readers of this blog. I really do not know much about the readers of this blog except that a little more than a dozen people read it quite regularly. Half of them are people I knew before I started the blog and half of them happen to be readers who’ve turned friends through the blog. Most of them happen to be in Hyderabad which is a happy coincidence because I get to meet many of them. And if what I’ve gathered over my occasional meetings with them is anything then I am understandably proud of my blog. All of them, without exception are people genuinely in love with books and reading with a taste in authors that is far, far better than mine. Needless to say they are all fine people and smarter than, who else, I.

As I wrote on an earlier occasion the biggest gain from writing this blog has been the priceless friendships I have made. I couldn’t have ever met them otherwise given my nature and also, if I might add, my job. In that sense the time and effort spent on blogging is more than worth it. The biggest drawback of blogging, one that I have stopped minding too much, is the time it takes away from my novel. Were it not for the blog I would have finished the book long ago but it is also true that were it not for the blog I wouldn’t have finished it at all.

There are many unfulfilled promises I made on the blog, about writing reviews of a few books, about writing about something interesting and such things that I have been unable to do. Either I forgot about them completely or I did not get the time to do what I promised to do. One also has to remember that I am a government guy which sounds like a nice name for another blog- The Government Guy.

I thank my readers once again. Thank you and please give me a break until next Friday.