What were your aspirations when you started blogging. have you achieved them?

I thought I'd have a book out at the end of my twenties but as time went by work and life got in the way, middle age is here but the book is nowhere in sight.  To fulfill that creative urge I used to have a weekly show with a friend on the community radio.  As time went by I discovered this 'blogging' thing and decided to put an audio blog of what we did.  The radio went on for thirteen years before that thing called work intervened again.  But the experience of putting up first blog led to a second blog which is now my main blog.  The frequency of blogging was not very good but thing was that I was writing again, geting things published here and there, daring to dream of writing again.  It is mostly drabble these days but I figure it's valuable writing exercise.  But I am happy and who knows it could be the start of something.

To share some good Information

I started blogging to become FAMOUS. 

I am nowhere close to achieving my goal. But I am not giving up yet 

At first, my site was a dump site for archiving reviews posted in forums. But most Indian tech forums trolled me out because 'I am bad for SEO'. No aspirations. Just keep on rollin' !!!

Thats right... 'Just keep on rollin'!' :) Love that...

keep walking keep moving.

When I started my Travel Blog 5 years ago, I wanted to help fellow travellers and the dream was to inspire people to travel through my writings. If I could inspire a single person to travel then I would consider myself successful.

Today when I open my Gmail every morning and see people asking me queries about their future travels or how my blog inspired them to travel it makes my day and spreads a large smile on my face 

I started blogging to participate in contests. I had a strange zest in me to win, it gave me extreme joy. After a few months of religious blogging and spectacular wins, I realized that there was so much more to blogging than contests only.... it was a wonderful journey for me which kept blossoming and sculpting me into what I am today. Blogging has taught me lot of things and the most important one I think is 'confidence' in one's ownself! You don't know what you are worth unless you come out of your cocoon and face the world with a single weapon- a pen(or a keyboard in my case)!  

Bushra 'zest' 

really 

@ajesh : amazing man. Seeing such a huge passage would tempt anyone to write tl; dr

But not in this case. Some writings are truely meant to be read and felt. Personally speaking you should not be distracting yourself with blogging now. 

Go ahead and complete that book. No matter how much time it takes. Atleast you will be working on something. Let it take time, most good books take time. 

You know that that exact thought has been whirling around in my head for a month or more now. I should really give up the blogging, FB, etc and just take the time I have now away from home to work on the book.

I mean there is no way in hell that I'm going to win any prizes for blogging. It may be because I never enter any contests.... However, I've seen bloggers who write 2 posts and start winning Liebster awards and Most Versatile Awards etc and it is all very discouraging for me. 

As far as traffic goes: I'm not in it to make money. Though if someone sees my work and offers me money to write an article, I may be tempted to say "yes" within 30 seconds or less. I never plan to allow ads on my blog. It's hard enough to get people to read without cluttering it up with ads that no one clicks anyway.

Right now, I'm in one of my depressive moods... maybe I'll post a deep, dark, depressing pome to cheer me up. Or bring out The Peeved Punjabi for a rant.

I've seen bloggers who write 2 posts and start winning Liebster awards and Most Versatile Awards etc and it is all very discouraging for me. 

These awards are given by bloggers to each other. The person who gets nominated nominates 10 other people. These 10 people nominate 10 others and so on. SO, virtually, everyone gets these awards if you know someone who got/is going to get the award.

These awards do not have any value and you can safely ignore them. 

It's hard enough to get people to read without cluttering it up with ads that no one clicks anyway.

It's possible to place ads without cluttering the page. It requires a bit of research and learning from other sites  It is a different matter that I don't recommend using ads till you have a decent traffic. 

Oh yes, Ranjith, I am very safely ignoring them. I get my reward from the regular readers who actually make meanigful comments and are willing to chat a bit. Then I know they read it, they actually read it and they liked it enough to spend some time chatting about it with me.

Yes - ads can be placed properly, but they aren't by most of the bloggers I have visited who do use ads. I really have a hard time finding the content with flashing lights, animated gifs winking at me etc.

It takes me back to the old days when video tapes first started coming out with Hindi movies on them. You would have a regular stream of ads running like a ticker tape at the bottom of the screen so that right at the climax when amitabh is bashing the living daylights out of the baddie you'd see Rupa underwear dancing along the bottom of the screen.

Faugh!!

I am still not clear about why I write... in fact, I'm not sure even about what I want to write about.

I'm still stumbling in some sort of a deafening darkness...

@AP a peg surely makes that walk in the darkness a bit more enjoyable. Just know that through that absolute void of darkness, only light can creep through and only light would be visible 

Weird - Charles D..ens, the well known author of Oliver Twist, David Copperfield etc has been censored. Ah, those pesky bots..

Looks like CK has got a new competitior  Way to go Ajesh 

Thanks, Vijay Prabhu! Dunno if I want to start an essay war with CyberKID, whose level-headedness I'm quite happy to see.

Welcome  Its not a 'war' its the insights you two provide 

AS > CK

Really!

In school, English was the one bright spot on an otherwise distinctly underwhelming report card. I was an average student (by cisrcumstance, I like to think, rather than abililty). There were other reasons or circmstances. My move to Calcutta in 1969 at the height of the Naxalite movement meant that external activities were limited / non existent for the first year or so. Not knowing the language didn't help. I turned instead to my father's massive collection of books and over the next 5 or 6 years I read everything from ****ens, Hardy, Hugo, Tennyson to Shakespeare. My father also had a huge collection of Perry Mason / Donald Lam as well as PG Wodehouse, Agatha Christie. He even had Marie Stopes on birth control, which I also read. By the time I was 16 I'd been through the lot.

In Class 11 and 12 I had the most wonderful teacher who treated us all like adults and he gave me the confidence to write. I wrote a few essays including one for the school's debating team. I had narrowly missed being on the debating team myself and so they asked me to write an essay instead on the motion. I did. A few days later my Hindi teacher came to class and said "to Sharmaji, aap likhte bhi hain!" Apparently that essay must have been passed around the staff room.

I wrote a play in Class 12 for teacher's day. We had started regular rehearsals. Then one day, the Rector came into the class and wanted to know whi the author was. I stood up and a couple of the other guys who had contributed stood up as well. We were then told the subject was highly controversial, open to misinterpretation and sadly, he wanted us to stop production. So that was my career as a playwright. I still harbour dreams of writing a play.

I went on to be involved in theatre very briefly for a bit, was a member of the college Drama club, went through weeks of rehearsals as Lysander in an open air production (with lighted torches) of A Midsummer's Night Dream, before pulling out due to exams and things. I did act in another play, Frank Wedekind's coming-of-age drama "Spring Awakening". I then gave up. I love seeing plays, I prefer them to movies. In the last coupleof years I've been lucky to see a bunch of really well produced theatre. Standout amongs that was "Tommy", the rock musical from The Who. Fantastic.

I wrote nothing between college and 1997, which is a long time. When I moved to Canada, I had a few months of very disturbing experiences which left me angry, frsutrated and very anxious. I wrote some poetry. (I write poetry only when I am really depressed)

Meanwhile, back in 2004, late at night, I was waiting to get started on moving some systems around and so I decided to check out what this blog thing was. I started with Microsoft's blog platform, now defunct. Then I dropped it until  a couple of years later when I moved to Blogger. I used t write very short, 1 paragraph items, not knowing who was reading (no one) and what the purpose was in blogging. Then I created a second blog in Wordpress. I ran those separately for a while, and gained some readers. Exact numbers are hard to work out. But it was more than 1 and less than 3.

Eventually, I tired of the administrative hassle of Blogger, I just could not get the formatting to look rght. This was in the early days of Blogger circa 2006/7 and that experience turned me to Wordpress,  which I found easier to use.

In 2009, I was laid off for the first time in my life and so I decided to finally start work on "the book ". Three chapters in, I realised I had no clue how to convert my life experiences into meaningful characters. So I decided to merge my two blogs, create personas and the rest is history. I'm still trying to write that book, btw.

I do feel that my style of writing:

1. is cumbersome to read for modern readers

2. has developed into a regular "voice"

I'm still learning the craft of writing. My blog's tagline, which has disappeared because of the theme I am using, actually says "Learning to write rightly". Most of the stories on my blog are true events from my own personal experiences.

Great Story. You should publish this as one of your posts.

To earn money

And, you are actually earning. That's a great achievement. Otherwise, one starting a blog with the sole aim of earning money would mean low amount of patience, making people try things which, a number of times shouldn't be done.

Thanks CK and yes I have seen many bloggers loose their way while trying to monetize

My current aim is also to earn money 

Waiting for someone to preach that 'Earning money from blogging is bad'. 

@ranjith:Earning money from blog is bad. It is bad as long as i dont start earning from it

I know that ur aim is to earn money R

This is a subset of my reply on another topic, but I started blogging because, at the time, Puzzle blogs were the fresh, new thing for International puzzle authors, and I was just starting out and wanted to join in. I had no aspirations at all - just wanted to put up the content I create so people can see.

My aspirations have since been updated and achieved at least three times, with my current one being to get a constant earning base in India like I have abroad now. I haven't achieved that yet. Not sure how long it'll take.

I started blogging to have something of my own, where I can do something independently and love for tech was the guiding force, still wondering where it will all go 

YAY! TIME FOR AN ESSAY!

For me to tell why I started blogging, and whether I achieved it, I shall put up an entire essay.

I had a hobby, the hobby of gardening. I used to click pictures of my plants and flowers, as I pursued my hobby. Being a part of a forum, for about four years now, I started interacting with people, from different walks of life, sharing tips and tricks and their opinions on whatever subject matter they connected with. I used to do it as well, sharing and gaining knowledge, over time. Then I stumbled across some photography threads on that forum. And as an amateur photographer that I considered myself (I still do), I started sharing photos of my plants and flowers, and whatever I came through that caught my attention and I could capture through my phone. Growing in the domain, I started to explore more. More pictures, more ways to share them, Flickr, Imgur, 500px, and was amazed at how brilliantly people clicked and showcased even the most common looking subjects. So, I started clicking more, experimenting on my way, clicking, post processing (editing), and doing experiments with photos, and so, I before I had even thought of starting a blog, I had literally thousands of pictures, hundreds of them, quite good enough to be shared on the internet. I usually posted them over the forum, flickr, and other such photo sharing sites.

It was in 2012 when I started looking for guidance to improve my gardening skills over the internet, the cheap way, with the help of freely available articles and such. I was unable to find much content, especially oriented towards the Indian user. In the US and EU has quite good programmes for these, but, India lacks such things. I looked on for online stores which are easily available for the regular US and UK user to purchase gardening supplies online and get it shipped to their homes. What I came across mostly was sites like ferns and petals, which charge upwards of 500 bucks for a regular rose plant, which they still do, and which you can buy for as low as Rs 25 from your nearby nursery and this irked me. Anyways, I stumbled upon a site - biocarve, bought some seeds and got them shipped to my office. And that day, all of the in my office people came to know that "I BOUGHT SEEDS ONLINE". The unavailability of information relevant to my conditions and gardening supplies was something that had become a sore for me.

Then, I decided to start a blog, one that would be more relevant to someone like me, constrained by space in terms of land to start gardening, having even the least of space in the balcony or on the roof, and having lots of enthusiasm. I didn't feel like doing some research, as blogging was something quite new to me. No one, I had ever known had blogged before. The idea clicked me in the night, while I was on the bed, about to sleep. I straightaway started writing, composed right from the scratch, and in that night itself, I created and posted 5 posts. With lip smacking pictures (atleast I think so), my intention was to create a resourceful destination, full with attractive pictures to let people know that constraints are not the factors stopping you, it's your own limited thought. Over time, I grew a more mature blogger, streamlining my blogging activities, and understanding pretty well, what the user wants, as exactly, that is the same thing, I, as a user want.

Though, my blog as it currently stands, isn't the one I wanted it to be, it anyway is on the path, atleast, I can say that one who sees my blog, with a distant thought of starting a garden, will surely be inspired to start gardening, maybe, with a single pot, but, surely will. More than that, I have a journey to share, which I like doing, through my plants, and my phone.

 I'll read the essay after my exams! 

YOU BOUGHT SEEDS ONLINE! 

Ferns nd Petals is for gifting and not gardening, right? 

I can say that one who sees my blog, with a distant thought of starting a garden, will surely be inspired to start gardening, maybe, with a single pot, but, surely will.

Everytime I open your blog, I too feel like starting gardening but I am afraid of the earthworm which you posted few months ago. 

YOU BOUGHT SEEDS ONLINE! 

yes, I bought seeds online 

Ferns nd Petals is for gifting and not gardening, right? 

They do sell plants. Mostly ornamental plants like bonsais, adeniums and lucky bamboos, and with horribly expensive price tags.

but I am afraid of the earthworm which you posted few months ago. 

earthworms are not known as man-eaters. They are called farmer's best friends.

Nicely put CK.

I think you are the happiest one here.

Most of us are fighting some personal demons or the other via blogging , specially let us not not forget 'he who always cries about lack of money' on indiforum.

... but I hate earthworms crawling on me 

I was going to ask you for advice for my back yard until I read this. Now I'm not sure, will you have info / advice for a garden that will work in temperate climates such as may be found in Southern Ontario?

43.6000° N, 79.6500° W specifically?

I think for those in the US, Canada and such areas, you have pretty good resources available. There is the National Gardening Association, a not-for-profit association for gardeners, then there is the USDA's online repository having a huge database of plants, and related information, and I believe these wou.ld prove to be pretty helpful for you.

great essay, as usual, inspirational

I wanted to be known as a writer. I haven't achieved that yet.

I'm still saying you, go for video blogging Sharma.... you have it in you!

you saw any videos created by nsv? 

Quote from my About Page: "He started out writing a book and realized he did not know enough about building characters. So as a lesson, he built three characters, who act as contributors to this blog."

Actually, there are 4 now.

Thumbs Up Sharmaji [Grin]

I started blogging to share my feelings and experiences with the word (in a cryptic way which no one can understand). After a year or so, I got bored and my frequency of blogging decreased. Then came, IB contests and now, I want to build aa site on cs and java.  

And you grabbed so many prizes despite your all riches!

Which one is better? 100 1 Re prizes or a single 1 lkh prize 

Now, my aim, part from cs and java site is to write posts on ALHT in which the characters die and make readers cry 

Rajni, so you too want to be sellable only like bhagat [that's good reflection wala smile]

did not understand