Blogging lessons

On a wonderful, cheerful and sunny Sunday morning, the 10th of August this year three unusual happenings took place:
1) I was happy in the morning at 9:00 am – which is very remarkable considering myself to be a sleep lover and nothing irritates me more than waking up early on a Sunday. (The reason I was happy was a humongous breakfast.)

2) I realised how totally jobless I was and how I needed to do something which wasted my time (since I was done with the college magazine). I decided to blog about my infrequent thoughts about nothing in particular.

3) I started enjoying writing about nothing in particular more than ever.

Since then my life has been pretty much the same – except now I can re-read my posts every morning and wake up bathed in the glory of the sheer power of intellect and being the enlightened one.
My life has not changed much.

But this blog has taught me lessons about the blog world.
And these are a few I can share.
I cannot share the rest because I have been sworn to secrecy by the rulers of the blog world
– In other words, I cannot share the rest because I don’t feel like it and I don’t think you should get to learn all of it so easily!

1) The first attempt is always good – thanks to the humongous breakfast.

2) After you make all your friends promise that they will visit your blog about half of them actually keep the promise. Out of those who do visit the blog half of them will read the first two sentences, a handful will just look at the pictures (if any), another handful will read half of the post and the rest (if any) will read the whole post. One “might” comment.

3) After three or four posts most of your friends don’t give a damn.

4) Strangers become friends thanks to blogging.

5) Strangers comment more often.

6) You form a new friend circle that consists of ‘loyal readers’ of your blog and realise your disloyal friends who never commented (ever) are just idiots.

7) Never ever post more than one post in a day. Nobody reads the post before the latest one. And no matter how wonderful/controversial/thought-provoking the post maybe you will never ever get any comments. (even though I have come across this rather disturbing lesson more than once, I still continue posting more than one post a day many a times – because I feel like it)

8) Never let the number of comments discourage or encourage you. It is a farce. It is a conspiracy.

9) There are always loyal readers lurking behind shadows – who never comment. They are pieces of modern art – difficult to understand.

10) There are always people who comment just because they saw your comment on somebody else’s blog and want you to read their blog. They are pieces of shit – cunning little devils.

11) Never reply rudely to any comment. They take it to heart thanks to the extreme deficiency of a sense of humour. They stop visiting the blog.

12) There are people, who read your blog and comment because they think you are cute, want to ask you out for dinner and are desperate – get a life!

13) Sometimes you have to sitewhore (put in your url as your status message in every networking site, post it as comments on others status messages, send messages containing your url to everybody on your friend’s list) to get people reading.

14) Not everybody appreciates bragging – because they don’t get to do it as often. Most people don’t appreciate it. I do not blog for ‘most people’.

15) Some people love deep, profound and philosophical posts; some people love crazy and weird posts; some people love lovey-dovey stuff. Even though the last category is impossible to please I try my best to not post for anybody but myself. I do not care what you love – you can start a blog about whatever it is that you love. On my blog you get to read whatever it is I feel like writing.

16) Spacing out the lines and breaking paragraphs helps lengthen short attention spans like that of my own. Long sentences, however, is my weakness.

17) Never put off posting for more than a week. You tend to fall into a delusional state in which you consider yourself to experience some sort of a writer’s block – which is pure and unadulterated bullshit.

18) You learn things you never knew about family and friends you have known all your life – I never knew I shared a common, recurrent nightmare with my mother!

19) Nobody likes to vote on your second polls. The first one might get some attention. The second one – nobody bothers (I have four votes so far!)

20) You might think you will run out of topics one day. But that one day seems very far away every day.

So, these are few among the lessons I have learnt.

Enlightening enough?