Sayesha's theory of (r)evolution

This post may come across as random and weird, but it's the amalgamation of many things that I have been pondering over for the last few days. This blog post is a post about my blog.

I was watching the SATC episode where Charlotte defines 'great love' as 'a love that shakes your core, and changes you forever'. Carrie professes in the end of that episode that if it was true that each person only got one great love in a lifetime, New York would be hers. I do not believe in only one great love, or only one soulmate. We connect with different people on different levels, and we should have the freedom to not let ourselves be restricted by the boundaries of the so called 'one great love'.

When I first started blogging, I didn't have the slightest idea about the kind of impact it was about to have on me, and the way it would change me forever, in terms of how I see other people and myself. So going by Charlotte's definition, I guess blogging would be one of my great loves.

And just like a first date, my initial blogging experience was rather awkward, punctuated by spasms of silence. I did not know what to blog about, how to blog. Hell, I did not even know why I was blogging! I did not know how to handle my anonymity. I did not know whether to keep my blog life completely independent of my real life. Though 90% of my blog readers do not know me in my real life, there are some who do. They have respected my anonymity and I respect them for that.

In my early blogging days, I thought I would make a list of blog rules. I thought I would keep my blog away from my parents so that they never see the un-pretty side of my life and get all worked up. I would never blog from office. I would never put up my pictures. I would never blog about certain things and certain people. I would blog only for myself and never indulge in any tag-blogging. I would never interact with bloggers outside my blog. But somewhere along the way, these rules got blurred. The more I blogged, the more vague the rules became. I reached a point where I realised that there was no point to having any cast-in-stone blog rules.

This blog has evolved. From being a place where I wrote down thoughts and incidents, to a place where I hang out with my blog friends. Blog friends - now that's a strange term. I used to think that you cannot make friends on your blog. And even if you do, they can never be as close to you as your real life friends are. I used to think that your closest friends are those whom you meet on a regular basis, those who live in the same place as you. But I have found friends through my blog whom I'm very close to, sometimes closer than the friends I meet on a regular basis. Of course, it has not always been pleasant, and even though I have made many many blog friends, along the way I have lost a few too. But one thing I am glad about is that I have not lost faith in blog friendships altogether.

When you have a thought, and you put it out there under readers' and commentators' scrutiny, there's a lot that could happen. You could see a totally different viewpoint, something so convincing that it changes your views forever. You could have a lively and intelligent debate. You could see a loophole in your argument. You could get validation for your theory. And you could get judged.

Truth is - we love to judge others. It makes us feel better about ourselves, and in spite of knowing that we don't like being judged, we still go ahead and judge everyone and everything around us. But lately I've started cultivating this teeny-weeny belief in my heart, that prolonged exposure to blogging makes us less judgemental. I strongly believe that my blog has made me a better person than I was because today I can stand up and admit that in the past I'd judged certain (the keyword being 'certain', please do not flood me with queries on whether I judged you any time and how) bloggers, just as they'd judged me. And that I don't do it anymore, at least not to the extent that I did before. It's difficult for us to completely stop judging others, but I am making a conscious effort not to, and here are some of my success stories.

#Blogger 1, I judged you because you added google ads on your blog. I was appalled at your attempt to make money out of blogging. But I am more mature and less judgemental now, and I have learnt that there is no predefined use of a blog. How I view blogging is not how you view it. One can use a blog for anything, and earning money is just one of them. So even though I refuse to put google ads on my blog, I am glad that today I do not judge those that do.

#Blogger 2, I judged you, because I thought you were materialistic and superficial and whiney. But after interacting with you, I realised that try as you may to put on a bitchy front on your blog, underneath all that is a heart of gold which holds no malice for anyone. And I am glad that I don't think you're putting on a front anymore, because the person who talks to me, and the person who writes the posts, is still you. I tried to fit you into a bracket, and I shouldn't have.

#Blogger 3, I judged you because I thought you were a fake blogger who was writing for others. But now I think that I was just jealous that you were getting 200 comments per post, and I wasn't. And I am glad that I have reached the phase where yes, I feel happy that people read my blog, but I do not keep count of comments. And frankly speaking, I don't think I can handle that kinda volume because I still want to be able to reply to each one of them.

#Blogger 4, I judged you because you did not stand by me at a moment when I thought I would find a friend. But then I realised that by not standing by me, you were standing by someone else. Perhaps you were doing what you thought was right, and so was I. When I was judging you for not being a friend, maybe that's exactly what you were doing - being a friend. To someone else, but it does not matter. I am glad that though my expectations from you went down, my friendship and respect for you is still the same. And it made me a lot wiser about expectations in general.

#Blogger 5, I judged you because the person I knew you as, was so different from the blogger you were. In real life, you came across as cynical and negative, but in your blog, you talked of things like friendship and love and happiness, which I'd never heard you utter in all my days of interacting with you. But then I realised that whatever it may be, it was still you. Maybe it was my ill fortune that I had not seen this happy and emotional side of you. It was just a part of you I had never seen before, and now I accept and respect it without reservations.

#Blogger 6, I judged you because you never had a good thing to say about anyone or anything on your blog. You were so full of negativity that reading your blog made me feel negative. And then I figured that maybe it was your way to vent frustration. Maybe releasing all the negativity on your blog made you more positive in real life. Blogs are supposed to be therapeutic, isn't it? Maybe your blog was bringing you positivity, albeit in a non-conventional way. And I'm glad I was able to look at it that way.

And finally, my MACs. I have had my share of anonymous comments - some that complimented me and then immediately tried to sell me ceiling fans and university degrees. Some that did not compliment me before showering me with mean hateful comments. Some from people I don't know. Some from people I know. Some from people who think I don't know it was them. At first I did not know how to deal with such comments. I got flustered, angry that someone who didn't even know me was judging me. Then someone told me that I should take it as a compliment that someone cared enough for my blog and me, to hate the two of us. That someone bothered about my blog enough to come back and check my reply to his/her comment, and then again to read my next post. I was also told that maybe I was taking the comments - both the bouquets and the brickbats - too seriously. I agree, I think I did. But I am glad that while I have stopped taking the malicious comments seriously, I have not reached the stage where I dismiss the bouquets too. When someone actually takes time to tell you something nice about you or your blog, you don't say "Bah!". You acknowledge it and feel grateful for it because in our world, appreciation is hard to come by. As for malice, there's plenty out there in the world, and so yes, we should not make a big deal out of it. And I'm glad that in those times of frustration, I did not stoop to the level of leaving malicious anonymous comments on anyone's blog. Because such comments seriously don't deserve any attention.

Some time ago, I renamed my blog from 'Sayesha's world' to 'Sayesha's bar'. Just for fun, for a change. I changed it back within a day. Because Sahil asked me to. Sahil, my blog friend who knows this blog like no one else does. Is mehfil ka purana diljala I call him. He said it didn't sound right, and I knew he was right. My blog is not a bar by itself, it's a bar because of the bewdas here. Without them, it would just be me standing along in this place hurling bottles and glasses in the air, and not quite catching them. This place is still 'Sayesha's world'. It becomes a bar only when the bewdas make their way in. And then something changes in the air, everything becomes happy. Lively. So maybe my blog has changed then. It has evolved from something that was only mine, into something I am happy to share.

Just like people, blogs do not stay the same forever. Other blogs change them, people change them. From being 'random ramblings' and 'mundane musings' and 'soul searches', they can become much more. They can be defined, and redefined along the way, in whichever way the blogger wants. That really is the beauty of blogging, isn't it?

So maybe that's what it is. Maybe I don't need to rack my brain and try to figure out so much about how and why I blog, or bother about judgements, or make so many rules. The important thing is to remember all the happiness, friendships, love and positive vibes that the blog brings into my life - and continue to blog for that.

I used to think that my life revolves around my blog.

I was wrong.

The truth is - my life evolves around my blog.