The story

I am very pleased to announce that this post marks #150 milestone for Steady Meanderings. No , I am not the kind who keeps tracks of these things , I'm very poor at statistics. However , I am very much addicted to social media and when I checked my memories on facebook for today , it came to my knowledge that 3 years ago on the exact same day was when this blog hit 100 posts. So I just counted the posts after that and voila! It was 149 ( You may never know with me , re count to be safe. I did count like 17 times. I do remember one accounts exam where I came to the same answer 9 times and the 10^th time managed to be different {and thankfully right} )

I could be a cool blogger who doesn’t fuss about this number and move on to the topic of discussion. Let’s face the truth , I am uncool.

I did write at length about my own blog once before in this embarrassingly juvenile post. ( Clickhere ) But history needs to be updated and a I want all the new readers to know the story of this blog which has shaped my identity and experiences over the years and moulded me as a person.

No , I am not going to go on a boring tirade of acknowledgements like an award recipient. I am going to just share with you all this blog’s story.

It all began one hot afternoon in Chennai summer of 2010 when S ( I hate using so many ‘I’s so switching to 3^rd person) sat in front of her archaic personal computer. She had heard that celebrities ‘blog’ and decided to ‘blog’ . She had ‘hi5ed’ ‘orkuted’ and ‘facebooked’ so why not ‘blog’. She followed some basic steps and apparently had created her own blog. What was she going to name it?

Ok this is getting crazy , switching to first person :P

I ended up naming my blog ‘ brainwaves unlimited’ as I was a big believer in eureka moments doing all the writing for you. It had a dark background and my first post was on ‘ Mafia Wars’, a game which reflected my love for Mario Puzo and ambition to be a Don’s wife ( the things one dreams of becoming in their childhood *sigh* ) One should give me credit for not deleting my horrendous posts. It provides quality entertainment.

 I kept racking my posts which no one had a clue about , I don’t think I even knew the art of facebook sharing or promotion back then. No one knew Brainwaves Unlimited existed. So what does the budding blogger do? Create another blog of course. This one was called ‘ Perceptions’ and had a pink background. So we had one blog for my brain and another for my heart. It took a while for me to realise that splitting my work in 2 blogs was counter productive as it looked like I hardly wrote in both the blogs and views came out to be less too. So I eventually combined both to become  “ Semi’s Stories and Sharings….” I always thought "…." Made one sound serious. Didn’t hit me for a long time that sharings wasn’t an actual word. Years rolled on and people started actually reading and reacting to my posts. Initially , it was read only by my school friends and relatives. My parents proud that their otherwise dull daughter was doing something productive , sent it to their friend circles. So I would have awkward moments when I would attend weddings and I would have adults who I hardly knew come up to me and tell me nice things about my blog ( red in the cheeks and quiet happiness that parents cared enough to share , Thenks Gaiz. ) 

I took up local journalism and spamming my friend’s walls ( not timelines)  with links. My initial posts are all light hearted and anecdotal – like this post hopes to be. Then like people transition the blog also did with more serious posts aboutaccidents and failures which hit my life finding a place here. High school saw me focus on the blog only when a ‘brainwave’ hit me hard. Somehow it survived through occasional updates. This has never been an ambitious blog competing for views or advertisements but merely a space where I voice out my thoughts or display some creativity and hope to engage in discussions or receive constructive feedback. This was followed by law school which meant lesser time for my blog which really stopped being updated. When I was applying for my editorial board I realised that ‘sharings’ wasn’t a word and I needed to rename the blog to submit it. So it became a more mature and less self obsessed ‘ Steady Meanderings’.

The name change brought in a responsibility to do something meaningful with it. So the ‘dynamic views’ template which looked good but wasn’t really functional was finally altered – that took a lot of effort as complacency sets in after half a decade of blogging.

I started participating in blogger communities like ‘ poets united’ which gave the jumpstart this blog needed. I also occasionally write for zeading and have started a wordpress blog ( blasphemy) where I promote anonymous content of budding writers. 

It feels like I have come a looong way from Mafia war days. Writing for 6 years , 150 posts only when inspiration strikes is an achievement which I can’t believe I have unlocked.

At one level , I write only for myself , I am not going to change my content for anyone. But , it gives deep satisfaction to a content creator when their content gets perceived in the way it was intended to be or gives rise to varied interpretations or provokes thoughts or debates. 

I would like to thank you if you have actually read the post till the end , it means you have been a part of my journey J and random feedbacks I get in my inbox or even an anonymous comment or criticism really makes my day cz no one wants to be not heard. On that double negative note I bid you goodbye!! 

( till the next post )

Samyuktha Semi Jayaprakash