Saturday, June 09, 2007

Repercussions of a desperate hunt for blogging topics!

I have said it before and I say it again - the biggest roadblock to my otherwise promising blogging career is my complete lack of ability to think of nice blogging topics. Once a topic is 'assigned' to me, I can sorta find my way through the post.

If I had a database with minute-by-minute data of how I have spent my free-time in the recent past, blogging would appear right up there on top. That however does not mean that I spend a lot of time next to my laptop typing out posts. Let's look at this rather interesting phenomenon in greater detail which has left me perplexed! Some estimated data to help us understand this strange situation (all figures estimated as a percentage of total blogging time)

Reading other blogs : 5%
Typing out posts : 15%
Reading my own blog : 5%
Thinking of blogging topics : 75%!!

Further breakdown of 'thinking of blogging topics' (total 75%) reveals:

Staring at the wall : 25%
Over lunch/ dinner : 20%
During office meetings :15%
While waiting at traffic signal : 5%
Commercial break between overs of a cricket match : 5%
Looking for topics on orkut : 5%

The above data gives some indication to the gravity of the current problem. To sum it all up, this never-ending search for good blogging topics has taken a high share of my precious free time away! There has to be a solution to this... in my quest to answer the biggest puzzle of my life, I thought "what are friends for?", let me ask for some help. So, I pinged Ninja on gtalk and asked her for "good blogging topics, please" - little did I know that I this was a sure shot formula leading to nothing but disaster. After much pleading, got a response "go blog on fashion!"... my immediate reaction was "waaaaat, no way"... so I stopped chatting and got back to my staring-at-the-wall-for-topics state. Spent hours thinking, didn't get another topic of interest. So, thought - "lemme write something on fashion offline and if it shapes up well, will post it on the blog"

So, I started typing... "ehh...fashion... is amazing... is good... defines attitude"

... didn't sound that good, realized I knew very little about fashion to blog. The only way out now was to act brave and write a post with a few strong statements!

"...to me, fashion means absolutely nothing... while television channels would hate this blog from now on, I think fashion has exploited viewers of their time and money... I was shocked to see fashion tv on the list of pay-for-view channels... it can at best be termed as a complete waste of time and money... we as individuals should have our own identity... following a fashion, is much like being lost in image of a brand... that's not inspiring enough, the world needs a change. Dear readers, please go and define your own fashion! For instance, fashion to me is a pair of jeans with a-crushed-and-washed-but-not-ironed shirt... da da da"

... not heading anywhere, I decided to end the post there... still in search of a topics...juntaaa, please help!

4 comments:

Cutting Chai said...

this is turning out to be a major stumbling block for me as well ! i have also realized i couldnt write about cambodia forever :p

Rangakrishnan Srinivasan said...

welcome to the club.... I had some 50 or so topics jotted down.... lost that paper. I am beginning to start again. :)

Rohini said...

See the point is, the true test of blogger is to blog about topics you are least related to and make them interesting.

The post is interesting but rather in a different way.. and my suggestion did result in a post.. so like that...:)

PaintItRed said...

@McD: phew! finally :-) ... 7 posts on one topic is sorta like beyond the upper limit!

@Ranga: Please send me in watever form u have those re-written topics... how on earth did u think of 50? help!!

@Ninja: Yep, true... but its about finding that one topic... and i learnt my lesson the hard way, no more gonna follow ur suggestions! :P