The Forgotten Joys of Blogging | #Musings

Up until a few years ago, personal blogging was such a thing! We had a bunch of us writing regularly, sharing a slice of our lives with each other, reflecting and analyzing upon the tiniest to the grandest of events around which our existence revolved; the lessons that came our way and the gratitude we felt as we navigated through the ebb and flow of life.

Somewhere along the way, in the process of documenting our lives for our blogs, we seemed to have fallen in love with writing – for the simple fact that the craft of writing could be so beautifully harnessed, into one of the most sincere forms of storytelling. Through writing, we learned to tap into our innermost thoughts, baring ourselves and sharing our vulnerability with the rest of the world in a way that we had never done before. As a by-product of that process, we also realised that our creativity had forged a pathway to help us better connect with others.

My own blogging journey unfolded in 2015 on a cold January morning. I took to blogging to document a trip to Chittorgarh. That one post set me off on a journey into self discovery, through twists and turns and alleys that I’d never have fathomed had I not taken to blogging!

Riding the crest of that wave, many of us enjoyed personal blogging for a good couple of years before social media brought the shorter-form platforms into the fore. Amplified by the prevalence of smart phones, these platforms eclipsed the longer-form blogging, making it hard to sustain itself in the “noisiness” of the digital world.

The number of bloggers and those particularly who thrived in the personal blogging space, slowly diminished, and the once thriving blogging groups disappeared within no time.

Somewhere between algorithm updates, social-media feeds, and the pressure to “grow fast,” we seem to have misplaced the simple, human joy of blogging. Not the polished, keyword-perfect, SEO-optimized kind, but the older, quieter version of blogging, the one where people wrote because they had something to say, not something to rank for.

What we really loved about blogging from those days was the fact that it offered us an online space where we could stretch out. One could write 200 words or 2,000—it didn’t matter. We could meander, reflect, explore, contradict oneself or even change one’s mind halfway through. There was ample room to think and it was liberating, reminding us that writing didn’t always need to be compressed into bite-sized pieces, meant for fast scrolling.

One could allow writing to breathe and that was enough too! I found this fact so liberating in the early years of my own blogging journey, that for many years, blogging became nothing short of a therapy for me. That fact alone helped me connect me to so many like-minded readers at the time. We not only hung out in the digital space, but we also lent a shoulder to one another, listening without judgement and offering presence in a way that few things could.

In fact, even before newsletters took over as the personal form of digital writing, our blogs symbolised a unique kind of emotional closeness. Our readers weren’t just following us—they were visiting our world. They arrived voluntarily, not because an algorithm pushed them to our blogs. The connection felt sincere, not forced. The post didn’t disappear like a story or reel. It sat in a quiet corner, waiting for the reader to step in.

Of course, then there was the “other” side of blogging, the part that doesn’t get enough appreciation. Sometimes we wrote a post that went nowhere. Sometimes we also rambled, because the point was to express, not to impress.

Would you still find this creative looseness now? I truly doubt it.

This brings me to the other thing that we all loved about our blogs: how it gave us the chance to show up as a real person—flawed, curious, evolving. We could be anything—it didn’t matter. I think many of my favourite posts were freewrites—where I was quick, honest, without the usual overthinking. If anything, those raw posts actually connected me even more closely to my readers. The comments were a proof. I still cherish those, when I read them today.

No one can beat the fact that our blogs turned into this amazing archive that we built over the years. With time, our blogs have turned into a timeline of our thinking—an evolving record of who we were and what mattered then, and what still matters to us. Isn’t that amazing that we can go back a decade or more and still trace our journeys?

Revisiting old posts is often surprising, and even amusing, and occasionally humbling too. Interestingly, it’s also one of the rare digital spaces where we can visibly trace our growth and see how far we have come along the way. Many established writers of today can trace their writing journey to the good ol’ days of blogging and how blogging still holds a joy that’s easy to forget in the age of viral metrics: the joy of writing for one person, or even just for oneself.

I’ve somewhat mixed feelings about blogging now, but I must admit, I’d like to live in hope. Perhaps, all’s not lost after all and there are those of us who have still not ready to hang up the boots yet! So, maybe, after all the noise, the joys of blogging aren’t completely lost. Maybe, they’re just buried under the noise of the digital world. All it takes now is a return to the basics: to write what matters to us, without the pressure, simply to enjoy the freedom of having our own quiet corner of the internet. Would you agree to that? Or disagree?

After all, we write because we enjoy writing. We publish because we wish to express our thoughts. And even if only a handful of people read it, you and I both know that our readers have chosen to step into our blogs with the intention, to actually stop by and read the posts.

To me, as I’m sure, it is the same to you, too, that small circle of genuine connection is infinitely more meaningful than thousands of passive views. What would you say, dear reader? Do share your reasons…would love to know if you agree or disagree.