Who's reading your blog?

Incident 1
I was cleaning my room when I heard a soft voice croon on the radio, "I'm a professional blogger." It instantly caught my attention.

I couldn't help but wonder -- What the hell is a 'professional blogger'????
Someone who gets paid to put her thoughts online for others to read?
Or someone who gets paid to put "her" thoughts online for others to read?

Incident 2
A few days ago, someone I've known for about a year emailed me her blog url with the words, "Since I've been reading your blog, it's only fair that you should know mine." I was impressed. To give someone your blog url is a huge step. The moment you do it, you have sealed your fate as far as your relationship with that person is concerned. People may not realise it, but being a blog reader entails a lot of responsibilty. And I was glad she believed me to be capable of that.

These two incidents set me thinking again about the age old questions -- why do we blog? Who's reading our blog? And where do we stop? Here are my thoughts.

1. Why do we blog?

A blog (short for 'weblog') is an online journal.
A journal is private.
A weblog is public.
It doesn't seem to make sense.
But it does.

My blog has my thoughts. It is not a magazine. It is not a newspaper. It is my blog. And my blog is public because I chose it to be so. It is my decision because it is my blog. And because it is my blog, no one, I repeat, no one has the right to dictate what I blog about.

I blog to figure things out.
I blog to figure myself out.
I blog to figure life out.

2. Who's reading our blog?

When we set up our own little blog, we're all excited. We blog away to glory. On every single topic under the sun. Then we visit other blogs. We see comments, discussions. We yearn for them. We give our blog url to a friend or two. If they like it, they pass on the url, or blogroll us. In the beginning, it's all fun as everyone jumps in and talks about stuff that everyone has thoughts on. After a while, as your thoughts mature, you begin to realise that maybe it wasn't such a good idea to give person X your blog url. Person X has meanwhile, passed on the blog url to many more people. Many of which you wish you could kick off you blog.

Do you ever really know who is reading your blog? Your husband, your in-laws, your girlfriend, your boyfriend, your boyfriend's mother, your ex, your middle-aged uncle in Gomtinagar, your sarcastic boss, that sniggering colleague you can't stand, the guy you fired last week, that junior you ragged in college five years ago, the guy whose heart you broke last month, your room-mate, your pizza delivery guy, your building watchman? And the list goes on. Last month, a guy who frequents my living room almost every weekend disclosed to me that he was a certain commentator Z on my blog!

So yes, it's safe to assume that everyone -- everyone you know, and everyone you don't know --- is reading your blog. But the best part is -- it's possible to reach that stage where it doesn't matter. The whole world can be reading it for all you care, but you don't hold yourself back.

3. Where do we stop?

Now since we're working on the assumption that everyone is reading our blog, where do we stop? Where do we check ourselves and say, "Stop, don't post that! Someone may be reading it!"

Do we have to stop in the first place?

A friend once asked me, "How do you do it? How are you so open on your blog?" It set me thinking. My blog is me. And I want to be open. Without having to mentally scan through the number of people who are about to read that eyebrow-raising-scandalous-horrifying post that I'm writing.

My take is -- if someone has a problem with you being open, well, it is indeed their problem. If we have to sense and monitor our thoughts before we post them, then that's the end of thoughtless thoughts, isn't it? If you're opening up your thoughts online, the least a reader can do is respect it, and not judge you. If your boyfriend wants to break up with you over a blog post, it is his loss, not yours. 'Cos that's you and he obviously can't handle that 'you'.

(Having said that, here's why I do not pass on my blog to my family. They don't know the blog rules. They will not hesitate before asking, "Why did you write that?" or "So what exactly happened after that?" or "Who was yesterday's blog about?" And when family asks such questions, it's hard not to answer.)

A friend once said, "The ideal blogging scenario is when everyone of the writers and readers are anonymous." No complications. But it's not possible to achieve that. The real world is not like that. So let's just blog away, bloggers. Without a care as to whether something you wrote is ringing a bell in someone's head, or raising a few eyebrows.

I write from my heart. Because that's the way I want to write. When I started blogging, I was writing things like, "Ok this happened." and "That happened." And then one fine day, I started blogging differently. Incidents became a platform for deeper thoughts. Honesty came to the forefront.

And the day I started writing with honesty, I felt a change within myself. I found myself getting closer to myself. I liked the new me. I may have angered a few people in the whole "I'm-just-being-honest" process, but I discovered something amazing -- the more honest I was, the more honesty I discovered in other bloggers and blog readers. And that kind of brought us all together, even though we don't know one another. To love, respect and admire things about each other. To identify with each other without judging each other. To me, that's what blogging should be all about.

The winds are changing direction. Our thoughts on our blogs in the virtual world are slowly gelling with the words we say and the actions we carry out in the real world. The real us and the virtual us are overlapping to the point when there's no difference any more. Our blogs are slowly turning into the real us. No layers. And that's when life becomes exceedingly simple.

Bloggers, blog honesty is contagious.

Beware, you may already have caught it.

But if you dare to trust me, I will tell you that it rocks.