Here's the thing, when I started writing my blog, I was very sure that I was not doing it for anyone else, I was doing it purely for me, I did not want to get conscious of my future audience while I was writing it.
I want to write for its own sake and then if someone reads it, its at their own risk and if they like it or not its a side effect from my point of view.
The audience and their reaction was not what I was working towards.
This action is its own end kind of philosophy. Actually all my life is based on that philosophy, or so I think that it is.
But, today I find myself questioning that. And the reason I am questioning it is because I just realized that I have 8 people following this blog, and that makes me feel, well both good and bad, which means that the above idea of not caring about the audience does not hold true anymore, does it? How did i get here? Let's see...
I guess some time after having written whatever it was i was writing, i started wanting someone to read it. I told couple of good friends and they read my blog (none of them follow it publicly though, which as i am writing it i am wondering why, why would they not want to be publicly be associated with this hmm... no, am not holding it against them, i guess it has to do with the whole privacy issues in todays world) So anyways, once these people started reading things, i wanted to know what they thought, and obviously, they didn't always have the time to tel me what they thought, or may be they did not think about it at all, or if they thought about it they did not think something nice enough to say,and being friends its kinda hard to say bad things so...
But from my side the trouble was that once I knew someone could read it - its online, its open, anyone with spare time can find it, i started expecting that someone should read it.
That, to me, is a problem.
I want to write for its own sake and then if someone reads it, its at their own risk and if they like it or not its a side effect from my point of view.
The audience and their reaction was not what I was working towards.
This action is its own end kind of philosophy. Actually all my life is based on that philosophy, or so I think that it is.
But, today I find myself questioning that. And the reason I am questioning it is because I just realized that I have 8 people following this blog, and that makes me feel, well both good and bad, which means that the above idea of not caring about the audience does not hold true anymore, does it? How did i get here? Let's see...
I guess some time after having written whatever it was i was writing, i started wanting someone to read it. I told couple of good friends and they read my blog (none of them follow it publicly though, which as i am writing it i am wondering why, why would they not want to be publicly be associated with this hmm... no, am not holding it against them, i guess it has to do with the whole privacy issues in todays world) So anyways, once these people started reading things, i wanted to know what they thought, and obviously, they didn't always have the time to tel me what they thought, or may be they did not think about it at all, or if they thought about it they did not think something nice enough to say,and being friends its kinda hard to say bad things so...
But from my side the trouble was that once I knew someone could read it - its online, its open, anyone with spare time can find it, i started expecting that someone should read it.
That, to me, is a problem.
4 comments:
I discovered your blog while searching for the lyrics of one of Begum Akhtar's song.And then i read few other entries.Many of the poems and the songs you posted are my favorite too. That E E Cummings' poem and then Meer's ghazal. And how did you finish Anna Karenina? I am still struggling with War and Peace for the last few years.Its too long.I read your last entry. It seems you haven't posted in a while.Maybe you can start writing again.
@prasoon:
sorry for the delay in replying.
Thanks, it is always nice to meet a kindred spirit.I suppose it is easy to like people who think like we do :)
I do want to write more regularly, but i find it takes away time from living, and i have thought about it a lot, I am never sure if it is better to live right now or better to write about a moment you have lived before. there are plenty of arguments for both.
True. I suppose it is easy to like partly because it is difficult to find people who share similar tastes.
I never thought about it. But now that you mentioned it, it does seem like a dilemma.
Have you come across Daniel Kahneman's research? In one of his lectures, he says that we think of ourselves in terms of two different selves - "an experiencing self" and "a remembering self".
The first one lives in the moment while the second one in our memory. And often they contradict each other.
He gives an example of how the notion of happiness is perceived differently by these two selves. A person once complained to him that his experience of listening to a beautiful symphony was ruined by a screeching sound at the end of the music. But the way Kahneman saw, this person had already enjoyed the music. It was only the last few seconds that was ruined. So what was actually ruined was not the experience of the music but the memory of it. And for remembering self, memory was all that mattered. I think writing about the past makes such contradictions more evident.
I used to keep diaries in school but now with so many things to do one rarely gets in the mood to write.
Oh My God!
I am really slow at replying back aren't I?
No I have not read Daniel Kahneman, I am thinking about this notion of the two selves. On a first take I feel it is the remembering self attaching a higher importance on the memory of the screech than the memory of the music or the enjoyable part that is the problem here, because it is as easily possible to find someone in the audience who did not choose to remember the screech.
Or is choose the correct word, I have been thinking about that too lately.
It is nice to hear from you, I will make sure I check back in a week so I respond back faster this time.
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