My 5 Years Blogging ...

With Multiply closing imminently, I have been turning in my head whether I should continue blogging. Whatever other people complain about Multiply, to me it's a wonderful site and I truly feel very sad it should end. I have accumulated in 5 years 4426 Blogs to date, which represent far more blogs than days. Maybe it's time I do a bit of reflection about what I have done and learned, sort of a brief summary.

A few friends had told me that I am a prolific writer. Prolific is relative; some people think writing one email a week is more than enough while others might reckon 2 or 3 a day is average. As to being a writer, that's debatable too. I write, yes, and enjoy doing so, but that doesn't exactly make me a writer, not in the literary sense, when the word "writer" implies someone who can write well, and with the end product that makes good sense or good reading. That too, is questionable, depending on each individual's personal idea or preference, as to what is good writing, and what subject matter is deemed by that person as interesting.

Right from the start 5 years back, I had made up my mind that I would not write it as a sort of diary, like quite a number of people do. I had wanted my Blogs to record my random thoughts that sprouts out of my own head, and/or my reactions caused by, or responding to, other people's. What happens to me by chance or by design, and if, or how, it is connected, or not, with the people around me. Not an orderly record of my life but a record of sort. I think I have done just that. Perhaps some details are trivial, but to me significant parts that make up the me that I am, and the direction my life is heading.

During this period I had encountered a few undesirable characters, stalkers, one of them also sent me unsolicited pornographic pictures. Extremely unpleasant experience I prefer to forget than to write about, and hopefully never happen again.

While importing to Multiply some Blogs from 360 where I had stayed only 4 months when it too closed, I had lost all the comments by friends and contacts on the pages, which matter little as those are usually wishes for the day, but those comments on my Blogs did matter a lot to me, as these were part of the record of how I got to know each and everyone of my friends, precisely through their generosity of letting me peek into their thoughts and opinions, which made up each individual as he or she truly is. Those from 360 & Multiply were readers of Blogs & commented a lot, not like other sites.

I had often wished I could master better all the intrigues of CSS, so that my page could look prettier like many of other users I have seen and admired. I did try to change a few things which have been bothering me, not so much for the appearance, more for practicality, making fonts easier to read If I knew how to change their size and colour for instance. Or active buttons for easier accessibility, etc. But, I am very much a tech illiterate, so I resigned to concentrating on what I can do with little effort: jot down my daily thoughts.

I have had the very good fortune to have 'met' and kept up contact with a few very nice friends, who continuously enrich my life letting me share their knowledge, culture and experiences with their Blogs, comments left on mine, messages to encourage, console or advise ... They sure more than made up for those weird characters, that had marred somewhat this otherwise very interesting period. Another definite plus factor is that I have learned quite a lot of things new to me, even on international level and the ever changing web know-how, in many aspects and in different ways, which I would never have learned on my own.

Not quite sure whether I would continue writing in a social site; I am still busy trying to locate and preserve some of the Blogs that are actual records of a good part of my life; the easy reading like jokes and trivial happenings I have decided to just let them die with Multiply.

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