INDIBLOGGER AND I – REALITY CHECK

I joined Indiblogger about two years back; indeed soon after I started blogging. It, willy-nilly got me in the habit of worrying about the popularity of my site: Alexa rank, Moz rank and ranks higher and better than those in the armed forces (Read ‘Blogging – Race or Stampede’). Today, after I finished 75000 pageviews, I wanted to do a reality check of how much Indiblogger has helped me to stay afloat. I was stunned when I got the results:

• I put up 145 posts on Indivine.
• I got 2288 pageviews. This makes it an average of 15.7 pageviews per post.
• Indibloggers, therefore, accounted for merely 3.05 percent of my total pageviews.

The sober inference that I drew from this confirmed my earlier suspicion that Indiblogger is all about ‘You scratch my back, I scratch yours’. For al practical purposes it is a popularity contest, an election, in which others vote for you with the hope that you’d vote for them too. If, for some reason, you omit to vote for them, that’s the end of their interest in your posts. Imagining and saying that all 2288 pageviews from my fellow bloggers would be for the purpose of reading my posts would really be too much. Just like the Indian democracy, one is happy that others voted; but, whether they voted on issues or otherwise is a moot question.

Having said that, I agree with a fellow blogger Jayashree that I discovered some great bloggers through the portal of indiblogger and not many of them were actually having very high on the Indi Rank. Without the indiblogger directory, I won’t have even known that these bloggers existed.

I have this deep desire to connect with the younger writers; to know what ideas they have, their emotions, expressions, aspirations, critiques, likes, dislikes. Here is what my ‘Reality Check’ has brought home to me: most younger people have values, love India, have very fine expression (many times better than mine) and are passionate about writing. As Jayashree predicted, I like their comments even on someone else’s posts. I have to be profoundly thankful to Indiblogger for discovering there are others who like to discover play of words and search for newer ideas.

On the subject of new ides; I must acknowledge that Indiblogger helped me to get interesting ideas from other blogs, some of which were very practical and appealing.

Therefore, I’d still keep posting, still keep searching for newer, better, more ineresting blogs and shall be grateful to Indiblogger that voting or no voting, it is fun being a part of it.

I like Indiblogger motto: I blog; therefore I am. But, the more befitting would be:

I blog; therefore, I discover other blogs and people.

Blogging is a great discovery of not only what lies within me but within other bloggers too.

Congratulations Jayshree for your having got another award: The Liebster Award. Thank you also for passing it on to me. However, as I wrote earlier, I am not into this sort of thing. Since, you asked me to repeat on my blog (what I wrote as a comment on yours in response to your Liebster query about 11 things that I feel would make a happy and fulfilling life), I am doing it now. For the other readers, let me tell you that as soon as the question was put to me by her, I wrote it down (in about ten minutes) as it came and I am reproducing here without any editing:

I don’t know what to say since it is not something that I am used to. Thanks for thinking so high of my blog. I am going to respond to your ‘Eleven things required for a happy and fulfilling life’ without too much of thinking. Here it goes:

#1. Good health. Without this, all others are but impracticable.

#2. Enough. All the money in the world cannot buy it. I have copied this from Joseph Heller’s response to Kurt Vonnegut, when the latter brought out the opulence in a billionaire’s party they were attending. Joseph said, “But, I have something that the b doesn’t have. I have enough.”

#3. Friends. If you are happy without friends, you must be abnormal. A man was nearing hundred and he boasted, “I don’t drink, womanise, smoke, don’t like music and friends….and in a few months time I shall be celebrating my 100th birthday.” At this, one reporter had a simple thing to ask, “How?”

#4. Simplicity. A complicated or complex life is not worth having even if you have tons of it…it weighs on you.

#5. Music. A life without music is…..well, life without music. Music is simply the soul of life.

#6. Imagination. An idiot is the happiest. However, if you can see and perceive beauty in God’s world, in the simplest of things that He or She or even It made, life can e suddenly most enriching, most satisfying.

#7. Ability to Listen. There is no point in having music if you can’t listen, can’t feel. Remember Wordsworth?

“The stars of midnight shall be so dear
For her and she shall lean her ear
In many a secret place:
Where rivulets dance their wayward round,
And beauty born of murmuring sound,
Shall pass into her face.”

#8 Gratefulness. God, (or whosoever you want to thank), thank you for giving me the gift of yet another day, for eyes to see, for ears to listen and for heart to feel.

#9 Love. This is not listed low. It is the essence of all the points above. Life can NEVER be fulfilling if one goes through life without loving. As they say, it is better to have loved and lost than not to have loved at all.

#10 Work. You have to find something that your hands can do: write, row, dig, paint, cook, anything. However, if you are work less, you are sans happiness.

#11 Outreach. If you can’t reach out to people who have less than you, you cannot be happy. There is great happiness in giving. It lessens your burden. As the Bible says, “I lamented I had no shoes until I saw a man who had no feet.”

Jayashree, when I started writing about ten minutes ago, I didn’t even know if I could finish eleven. I am not going to edit or even read back….since the most fulfilling life is one without regrets…I have no regrets that I have missed out many seemingly impressive things from my list.

Unsaid response from Jayashree: Thank you, sunbyanyname; I am glad after all these months you got the spellings of my first name right.