Usually, I hate to write autobiographical blogs. It exposes you. It puts you in the spotlight when you don’t want to be. And it is boring! Whose life is interesting without any of the traditional spices added to make a story tick? Instead, I prefer to write stories and using the anonymity of characters, I keep pouring myself out. The only indication a reader gets that these characters might not be that fictitious, not that unrelated to me (okay, apart from the relation that they are the characters created by me) is that I put my blog-stories under category ‘Not so fictitious’. Then I wear a satisfied (smug?) look on my face and invite readers to decipher which part of the character belongs to me, which part really happened, which are figments of my imagination.

It is not that I have a huge blog following. My readership would certainly come under one of the tiniest one on the face of the earth. But there is an important reader who never gives up on me, or rather how hard I try to get rid of him, he never leaves me alone. He always reads my blogs (and I can feel his prying eyes on me as I write), never get easily satisfied unless he gets what he wants. Sometimes, I love him, but more often I hate him; and not less importantly, sometimes I simply grow neutral to him. So, although the readership base may be not so large, but it’s quite significant  for me(yes, there i said it. I am an egoist) to keep them satisfied.

The size of the readership once worried me and it had my attention. I used the usual dirty tricks of going to every damn blogs on WordPress.com and liking their posts or entire blogs without bothering to read their posts or know what their posts are all about. It did work for some time. I started getting good number of likes on my blog. No matter how less effort I had put to stitch together the words/ideas to come up with a pitiable story or poem, I got enough number of likes to fool me that I am doing a good job. However, I realized that there are some rules to follow if I were to remain in their favorites list for a long time. The first rule was to keep posting. That was easy. I kept churning out poems or short blog-entries on day-to-day basis. Now, the other rule — to engage with them. I was required to go to their blogs and like their posts. Not only this, I have to comment (that’s the difficult part unless you want to make fun of yourself, and blabber in the comment section without bothering to know what the post was all about.) It’s not that I am an introvert. I don’t hate engaging with strangers.(In fact, I am more of a professional when it comes to engaging with strangers in the real world). But I found that reading somebody else’s blog is not my cup of tea. It had nothing to do with the quality of blogs I read. Somewhere deep inside, I decided to utilize my blogging time to write my new ones, instead of spending time on somebody else’s blog. For me, blogging means to write blog. (Throughout the day, I get or have to read somebody else’s work. Here, I get to make others read.)

Gradually the likes tinkered down. But I got used to it once I shut my eyes to all popular blogs. It gave me freedom not to post anything new for months. I utilized this to write longish short-stories. I planned the plots, characters, moments, and then penned them together into my stories. And sometimes, I do nothing at all. I try to keep my eyes and ears open. Away from the scrutinizing gaze of the readers (except the intruder) , I just keep waiting for an idea that would possess me as I go along with the thing called Life.