If you are a Blogger and you are in India, your situation will be like a new animal in zoo. Bewildered gazes, and eyeballs rolling in laughter at whatever you are trying to do! If you think that people who are technical or educated understand your premise you are wrong, I am in an engineering institute and we have the technical knowledge of a gnat.

We are not taught anything that directly relates the industry. Before I side step my discussion to the de merits of rote learning let me tell you that what college students can do with a 1mbps wi fi connection is download p**n and movies. And of course there’s facebook.

And if you happen to do anything else with that speed like blog, the whole attention comes to you but that’s just a minor excitement about the unknown, a few questions and then when they have confirmed that its stupidity they leave you alone.

Even people who end up buying a domain and hosting don’t bother to start their blogs. 50% of people who use the free wordpress installation from John Chow haven’t penned a single post in 6 months.

“Isn’t a blog where you write poems?”, asked someone. Oh Yes why not?

So how much money have you made asked another and when I say that, its a game of patience and I earned only $100 after two years when I started out, well that’s the end of conversation.

Because the internet has been associated so much with all the not so good things( P*** drives 27% of global traffic), if someone spends so much time with a “ dubba” or box as they call it here, people start assuming things.

The term people includes “our parents” too.

Its difficult to convince people who have been working tirelessly all their lives that there is a better way around.

We call it the dot com lifestyle( period)

Especially in India which is a country that’s been obscenely fascinated with academics, where the great Indian dream is an engineering degree in an IIT and anyone with a pinch of creativity is skinned alive, it can be hard.

I read a post on Shoutmeloud where Harsh told me about a rather educated MCA girl who did not know what blogging was.

He just told her that he designs websites and maybe I too would do that. The end result with trying to explain blogging brings tears to my eyes always. Not the emotional ones.

The whole scene changes only when the pay cheques arrive.

But before that you need to persevere. A blogger is the sole person who would be rowing eastwards in a situation where the weatherman has divined storms east and the whole world is diving west wards.

You get only sarcasm all the way until you make it and that’s why professionals tell you to blog about what you love.

The journey will be much easier!

Its always a tad bit difficult when it comes to following your dreams.

But if you have read the Alchemist by Paulo Coehlo then you will know that, its not because following dreams is easy or doing what you love an a bed of roses that people do it. At the end of the day your life has just become meaningful.

The second part of my rant begins now. Being afraid to blog. Being afraid to do what you want to do because you of what they may think.

Being afraid of your relatives, people around you.

Dear Reader,

You don’t owe your life to them

Your life begins the day you realise that your life is your very own and whatever form shape or size it takes it truly is your responsibility, yours alone. You need not lead a life in a way that others are pleased by it.

You need not bother to be a product of other’s thinking.

You know what, others are thinking what you will think if they do so and so stuff.

Break away from the prison today. The journey is worth it.