Blogging, From a Blogger’s Perspective

Why the heck would anyone make his journal available to virtually everyone by publishing on the Internet?

A peep from the door that stands ajar confirms that mom is immersed in the evening soap drama and my brother is engrossed in his Pokemon cards; dad hasn’t returned from work yet. Okay, the coast is clear!

I have promised myself not to over-indulge in this new-found obsession of mine, but the irrepressible compulsion rages in the least expected moment and whenever that happens, it renders all resistance futile. So, as if a drug user suffering from withdrawal syndrome, I have the computer switched on. Then, from the innards of my messy folders, I open the file. The name I gave it is obscure so as not to raise any alarm lest someone in the family meanders and accidentally bumps into the file which I have kept secret.

A dialog box prompts me for the twelve-lettered password, which I can now type with great dexterity; faster than you can say “abracadabra”. Ah, at last! The outlet to relieve myself of the stress I’m suffering! Everything is a bliss when it comes to blogging!

Though “web logging” aka “blogging” cannot be found in my obsolete edition of “Contemporary English Dictionary”, it is fast catching up as a new form of hobby. A blog, in short, is an online journal. Yes, it is a diary which you publish on the Internet for web surfers to read all about yourself.

“Huh? Isn’t a journal supposed to be private? Why the heck would anyone make his journal available to virtually everyone by publishing it on the Internet?” you ask. “Only psychos would do that!” Perhaps, I am a psycho. But by the way, just in case you don’t know – there are 5,745,369 psychos out there as well. And the number of Internet users keeping blogs is ever-growing.

The quintessence of blogging is that it gives a hand to the freedom of speech, to a certain extent, that is. A blogger can virtually post anything on his blog: from personal grouses to local happenings; from daily journal to the number of trips he makes to the toilet everyday. For me, I write on topics close to heart, which sometimes leads me into divulging many an issue too personal. Believe me, the notion that someone out there is reading your blog more or less halves the emotional burden you are shouldering and doubles the joy.

When my friend certified the death of his few-month-old blog, I found it quite incredulous. He claimed to have nothing to post on his blog, which came to me as ironical as Robin Hood denying that he can’t shoot an arrow. In reality, he is apparently a better writer than I am, considering the creative stories he has written over the years in high school. Perhaps, low readership is not very much a fillip to him. After all, bloggers just don’t really go about advertising their blogs. As a matter of fact, the rate of readership is governed by the head-scratching mathematics of random probability – it is rather by sheer chance and luck that someone-from-somewhere-out-there, who is reading the blog of someone-from-elsewhere-in-the-world, decides to click on the “next blog” button and gets himself directed to your blog.

I am about to contradict myself by saying that I publish my journal on the web, and yet keep it a secret from my family. Indeed, my furtive behaviour needs some explaining, which, strangely, I can’t offer. It is as abstruse to you as it is to me that I somehow find it more comfortable an idea in confiding in a blog rather than confiding in someone in the family.

Blogging may be a new form of hobby that has attracted the interest of a huge crowd since the late 1990s. Nevertheless, here is a word of caution for those of you out there who are thinking of starting a blog: blogging is seriously contagious. I have seen it spreading from one friend to another, and quite a number of them are now hopelessly addicted. Do give serious thought to it before you make your choice!