Eschatology

The meaning of the day of the blog is changing. While some argue that long-form journalism is in, I think it's about extreme-form journalism. By this, I only mean that long-forms and short-forms are increasingly doing better, while the in-betweens are having to constantly redefine themselves, nebulously poised as they are between one mode that takes seconds to go viral and another mode that engages the intellectual and the creative for periods long enough to prompt protracted introspection on all kinds of things.

Having said this, it is inevitable that this blog, trapped between an erstwhile obsessed blogger and a job that demands most of his time, eventually cascade into becoming an archive, a repository of links, memories, stories, and a smatter of comments on a variety of subjects - as and when each one caught this blogger's fancy. I understand I'm making a mountain out of a molehill. However, this episode concludes a four-year old tradition of blogging at least 2,000 words a week, something that avalanched into a habit, and ultimately into a career.

Thanks for reading. Much more will come, but just not as often as it has.

A revisitation inspired by Facebook's opportunities

When habits form, rather become fully formed, it becomes difficult to recognize the drive behind its perpetuation. Am I still doing what I'm doing for the habit's sake, or is it that I still love what I do and that's why I'm doing it? In the early stages of habit-formation, the impetus has to come from within - let's say as a matter of spirit - because it's a process of creation. Once the entity has been created, once it is fully formed, it begins to sustain itself. It begins to attract attention, the focus of other minds, perhaps even the labor of other wills. That's the perceived pay-off of persevering at the beginning, persevering in the face of nil returns.

But where the perseverance really makes a difference is when, upon the onset of that dull moment, upon the onset of some lethargy or the writers' block, we somehow lose the ability to set apart fatigue-of-the-spirit and suspension-of-the-habit. If I no longer am able to write, even if at least for a day or so, I should be able to tell the difference between that pit-stop and a perceived threat of the habit starting to become endangered. If we don't learn to make that distinction - which is more palpable than fine or blurry most of the time - then we will have have persevered for nothing but perseverance's sake.

This realization struck me after I opened a Facebook page for my blog so that, given my incessant link-sharing on the social network, only the people who wanted to read the stuff I shared could sign-up and receive the updates. I had no intention earlier to use Facebook as anything but a socialization platform, but after my the true nature of my activity on Facebook was revealed to me (by myself), I realized my professional ambitions had invaded my social ones. So, to remind myself why the social was important, too, I decided to stop sharing news-links and analyses on my timeline.



However, after some friends expressed excitement - that I never quite knew was there - about being able to avail my updates in a more cogent manner, I understood that there were people listening to me, that they did spend time reading what I had to say on science news, etc., not just from on my blog but also from wherever I decided to post it! At the same moment, I thought to myself, "Now, why am I blogging?" I had no well-defined answer, and that's when I knew my perseverance was being misguided by my own hand, misdirected by my own foolishness.

I opened isnerd.wordpress.com in January, 2011, and whatever science- or philosophy-related stories I had to tell, I told here. After some time, during a period coinciding with the commencement of my formal education in journalism, I started to use isnerd more effectively: I beat down the habit of using big words (simply because they encapsulated better whatever I had to say) and started to put some effort in telling my stories differently, I did a whole lot of reading before and while writing each post, and I used quotations and references wherever I could.

But the reason I'd opened this blog stayed intact all the time (or at least I think it did): I wanted to tell my science/phil. stories because some of the people around me liked hearing them and I thought the rest of the world might like hearing them, too.

At some point, however, I crossed over into the other side of perseverance: I was writing some of my posts not because they were stories people might like to hear but because, hey, I was a story-writer and what do I do but write stories! I was lucky enough to warrant no nasty responses to some absolutely egregious pieces of non-fiction on this blog, and parallely, I was unlucky enough to not understand that a reader, no matter how bored, never would want to be presented crap.

Now, where I used to draw pride from pouring so much effort into a small blog in one corner of WordPress, I draw pride from telling stories somewhat effectively - although still not as effectively as I'd like. Now, isnerd.wordpress.com is not a justifiable encapsulation of my perseverance, and nothing is or will be until I have the undivided attention of my readers whenever I have something to present them. I was wrong in assuming that my readers would stay with me and take to my journey as theirs, too: A writer is never right in assuming that.

Homecoming

Apparently, I'm back. There's no leaving WordPress, at least for the foreseeable future. I switched to Posterous a few days ago, enjoyed a good run, but as the days passed, I began to miss the charm of WordPress more and more.

Posterous might have made it ridiculously easy for bloggers to post content, but I believe they lack WordPress's formalized showmanship. The platform also claims that it removes a lot of distractions and lets the user focus just on content: I think that for longtime bloggers, that doesn't make a difference.

Finally, the sheer number of options on WordPress - even if many are redundant - is something I've grown used to having around, a luxury if you will. And last night, my emotions got to the point where I reopened this blog and told myself I'm not going anywhere.

I'm home. :)

The invisible bridge

In a college of journalism, you'd think the blog posts would have to be better researched, better articulated and better delivered. While the latter two are a matter of personal choice, the first - good research - becomes unnecessary. When I was in an engineering institution for my UG, I blogged so frequently and so much that people began to take notice: I was "the blogger". At that point, the things I wrote about had nothing to do with engineering and it is quite a surprise how there are many engineers who'd have trouble understanding Foucault or Nietzsche or Machiavelli. Consequently, I began to research my posts well, ensuring no wrong information got out - directly or as a matter of interpretation.

Here, at ACJ: one misstep and I'm screwed. Both honest and crazy intellectuals will pounce on the slightest of mispronunciations and attempt to secure an argumentative victory. I don't rant out facts and statistics like I used to not because I've forgotten them but because it seems as though just listening to those around me is going to vindicate half the fee-amount I paid. At first, all the hooked-up contentiousness seemed sensational. Now, it seems abjectly pointless. Even in institutions such as this, apparently, there are some people caught between the states of "good journalist" and "bad journalist". I could be one of them, but I must admit hypocrisy - my friends will observe - has not bothered me. Being against my journalistic cause as it may seem to be, I'd clarify that this is a different kind of hypocrisy. Yes, another kind.

Enough of that BS now. Picking up from where I left off: blogging in an encouraging environment seems to be weaker than blogging in a discouraging environment. From an engineering standpoint, that's only sensible: the work done by a system working between two states that have a significant difference in enthalpies is much higher than the work done by a system working between two states that have a small difference in enthalpies. However, that also entails the input to be greater (because a greater "quantity" of work needs to be done to increase the potential energy of the system to so-so much). Similarly, blogging in a discouraging environment is bound to produce greater results if only I'd persist with it (keeping the time-frame finite, the results are only going to be better than what they were during the period of encouragement - which should do).

I love thinking like how an engineer would about things: systematically, without any fuss whatsoever, always knowing full well that if something's wrong, I'm also going to know if or if not it's going to be in my hands to fix it. If it is, then I will. If it isn't, then I won't. The mathematics at work behind all this structure and formality ensures that if things are right in principle, the rest will fall into place. That's the invisible bridge that spans the distance between cause and effect. Science is the grammar when literature's the right reasons, and if you see the problem - any problem - all you have to understand is that you're looking at many invisible bridges waiting to be stepped on.

The invisible bridge

In a college of journalism, you'd think the blog posts would have to be better researched, better articulated and better delivered. While the latter two are a matter of personal choice, the first - good research - becomes unnecessary. When I was in an engineering institution for my UG, I blogged so frequently and so much that people began to take notice: I was "the blogger". At that point, the things I wrote about had nothing to do with engineering and it is quite a surprise how there are many engineers who'd have trouble understanding Foucault or Nietzsche or Machiavelli. Consequently, I began to research my posts well, ensuring no wrong information got out - directly or as a matter of interpretation.

Here, at ACJ: one misstep and I'm screwed. Both honest and crazy intellectuals will pounce on the slightest of mispronunciations and attempt to secure an argumentative victory. I don't rant out facts and statistics like I used to not because I've forgotten them but because it seems as though just listening to those around me is going to vindicate half the fee-amount I paid. At first, all the hooked-up contentiousness seemed sensational. Now, it seems abjectly pointless. Even in institutions such as this, apparently, there are some people caught between the states of "good journalist" and "bad journalist". I could be one of them, but I must admit hypocrisy - my friends will observe - has not bothered me. Being against my journalistic cause as it may seem to be, I'd clarify that this is a different kind of hypocrisy. Yes, another kind.

Enough of that BS now. Picking up from where I left off: blogging in an encouraging environment seems to be weaker than blogging in a discouraging environment. From an engineering standpoint, that's only sensible: the work done by a system working between two states that have a significant difference in enthalpies is much higher than the work done by a system working between two states that have a small difference in enthalpies. However, that also entails the input to be greater (because a greater "quantity" of work needs to be done to increase the potential energy of the system to so-so much). Similarly, blogging in a discouraging environment is bound to produce greater results if only I'd persist with it (keeping the time-frame finite, the results are only going to be better than what they were during the period of encouragement - which should do).

I love thinking like how an engineer would about things: systematically, without any fuss whatsoever, always knowing full well that if something's wrong, I'm also going to know if or if not it's going to be in my hands to fix it. If it is, then I will. If it isn't, then I won't. The mathematics at work behind all this structure and formality ensures that if things are right in principle, the rest will fall into place. That's the invisible bridge that spans the distance between cause and effect. Science is the grammar when literature's the right reasons, and if you see the problem - any problem - all you have to understand is that you're looking at many invisible bridges waiting to be stepped on.

The Blog Pact: A poem

What’s the use of a blog pact /
When no one will blog /
They always say they will /
But no one has blogged /

The weeks turned into months /
The months turned into years /
The pen has run out of ink /
But the canvas is empty and in tears /

Like a brave warrior with sword /
Turned away from his destiny /
I blog like a lost weapon /
Craving for a just adversity /

If only someone would write /
I might have something to read /
I write and I write and I write /
And it’s become like a selfless deed /

One thousand pages are filled /
One hundred quills have withered /
Twenty thousand eyes have been pleased /
Only two have witnessed any work /

It’s your choice to write or not /
It’s your word to give or take /
There is no oath ever levied /
Although it helps if a promise is made /

The eyes are lonely and the road barren /
Each day’s demands are a sullen pique /
The pages are many and the ink awaits /
I must write now so you can read and sleep /

Related Articles

• Poem: God May be Out There, But Very Busy (fmpoetry.wordpress.com)