Forever a Newbie

I’m embarrassed to admit, my blog’s anniversary date had completely slipped my mind. To add more lapses to my memory, I was convinced that I’d completed just three years of blogging. This was till I saw the chronology of my blog-posts and discovered that A-Musing is now 4 years old. Don’t blame me. To me, it still feels like yesterday, when I started writing to amuse strangers, many of whom became friends with passage of time. 

As someone who invests a chunk of her time on her blog and earns only a mixed basket of brickbats and accolades and no money for her efforts, it’s difficult having to explain what I do to people I meet for the first time. If I say I blog, they want to know what I do besides blogging. It becomes awkward having to explain that reading, stressing about what to write next, waiting for inspiration to strike and then writing and rewriting to get the confluence of thoughts and words right, keeps me busy for hours. To add to my misery, most of my real life friends have no interest in my blog and my little achievements, so I make sure I don’t utter a single word about it and make them uncomfortable. Sometimes I feel I lead a double life – my online life spectacularly different from my offline existence.  

My Mom gets very upset that she can’t brag about me to her friends because they have no idea what a blog is. For that matter, neither did I till I started blogging in 2010.

Neither can I introduce myself as a writer to the uninitiated especially after being privy to comments like, bloggers are not writers/ blogging is simply graffiti with punctuation. For most, you are not a writer till your book gets published. Since I write mostly for online sites like IBN Live, Times of India’s NRI Section and Unreal Times, on and off, I prefer describing myself as someone who works for love.

Most don’t get it. So be it.

So, when I won the BlogAddaward for the best Humour and Satire Blog, I preferred sharing my elation with my online friends. I felt only they could understand how great it feels to get a formal recognition for something that started off as a hobby and became a passion. 

A tentative foray into a world I had no idea about, expecting no one to read what I had to say. In fact, when I got the first comment on my blog-post, I was tempted to run up to the noble soul and crumple at his feet with gratitude. 

I feel doubly privileged to have won the Indiblogger and Blogadda awards but the thought that whatever I write now might prompt someone to think, don't tell me SHE won the best humour and satire blog award for this shit, terrifies me. 

I know I am not the best but it is very easy to believe the ‘awesome, sheer brilliance, you are too funny’ comments on your blog. But a part of you knows that many of them are just being kind. That’s why the odd criticism rankles you for weeks and makes you doubt your ability as a writer of calibre. Thankfully, I’m blessed with a family that keeps me grounded with their cringe-worthy opinions of my “masterpieces”, tch tching at my misplaced commas that make my carefully constructed sentences seem like a life sentence.

So, to stop myself from feeling overwhelmed at the rising expectations from me, I will continue to think of myself as not a veteran but the eager newcomer I was four years back. Funnily, I was regarded as a veteran even as a newcomer. When Blogadda announced my blog as a notable newbie, it was received amidst chortles of amusement from my readers.  In 2010, when the now defunct “Blogjunta” announced its first ever Blogging awards, which I won later, the organizers had to deal with complaints of a veteran like me being nominated in the humour category. 

Accepting myself as a veteran will be akin to committing harakiri, admitting that I am way past my best. I’d like to think that my best is yet to come. I will continue to think of you as a restive audience whose attention I have to grab by being as interesting as possible. My heart pumping wildly as I hit the publish button, wondering about the kind of reaction my new post will elicit. Never being afraid of committing mistakes or admitting to them. And feeling as grateful as I did those many years back when one of you is kind enough to leave an acknowledgement.