They say,” “The journey is what brings us happiness and not the destination.”- anonymous

So True!!! Somewhere in these insane schedules, when we take a short break, and look behind, it all rewinds like a film, leaving a smile. If it does not, then you are still on the way to reach a milestone. What makes us feel good about what we are doing?  I also tried to figure it out.

Today, I am sharing my journey as a blogger. Though I encountered blogging when I was 23, in 2009; but blogging had taken birth 14 years ago.

Year 1994:

I was in 4^th standard, enjoying my carefree childhood in a small town “Indore”, which was far far away from technology. To our generation, technology was a “use only when needed” thing. We did not really survive on gadgets. Those were the days when new inventions had to travel a number of years to reach us. World was big then. And the US were 7 seas away. (Saat samandar paar)

At the same time somewhere in the US, a journalist “Justin Hall” created a blog, which was not referred to as a blog immediately. It was simply registered as a personal homepage.17^th December 1997, Jorn Barger created his own blog called, ‘Robot Wisdom’. And invented the name “weblog (Web+Log) ’ for it.  Later in April or May 1999, Peter Merholz, jokingly used the word” Blog (the short form of we-blog)”  ; in the sidebar of his blog “Peterme.com”. And since then the world knows the informal, informative websites as BLOGs.

Year 2009:

Blogging was a revolutionary creation. It took a really short time to become a fad. Every writer now can easily get a platform to publish. I was introduced to it, by my Manager, when I was working at IIT Bombay in an e-learning content development team. All of us from our team were asked to create blogs. The purpose was to get us on the platform, to portray our skills in a professional manner.

From the two most popular platforms of recent times: Word press and Blogger, I chose ‘Blogger’ as it looks fancier to me in terms of design. As an animator I wanted my work to be displayed in a colorfulway.be it just the words. And word press was focused purely on the words.

Blogging being a compulsory task assigned by a manager was not kicking me. It all started casually.  I still remember while naming my Blogger profile,”Pyari chudail”; I was laughing loudly and having all the fun myself. I had no clue what to put on it. Name was obviously suggesting my character: “Sweet but dangerous”.  So no idea for a write-up was coming up to justify it. It has to be ’Dhamakedaar’. I had a total of three poems by then, which were close to my heart, written for my love, and supposed to be very personal. I just couldn’t put them up for the public. Neither till then I had ever written anything else myself.

I randomly started reading blogs. And something clicked. I started enjoying the articles, for their personal touch. Blogging was meant to be used as a personal digital diary. Never before, I had come across any writing material which could reach to the heart straight. Newspapers, Magazines, Novels, even internet content, all had a formal feel, while blogs made the reader and the writer sit right before each other and communicate.

Bingo, as an overly outspoken person, I found the blogging medium so fascinating, as I could reach out to the readers so quickly and directly. The same time my emails, my poems, general articles, even meeting notes, started getting appreciation.  I was more than happy, and soon realized that; writing gives me more satisfaction than anything else.  And now I know why?  It gives me freedom to express with no filters.

Year2010:

Soon, I penned down a short story, ‘Vision’. But before it gets published on my blog, my Profile’s name has been changed from “Pyari chudail” to ‘Go- getter’. Not to mention why? As I was just a person before and now I had a goal. And that goal was to look ‘Beyond the Horizon’. So first my short story ‘vision’ has published on my own blog called’ Beyond the horizon’

There did not come 100s of comments and shares. There did not come any exhilarating feedback either. But still there entered a supremely satisfying feeling in my heart. I was very happy once I created it. I still remember ‘the spark’ I felt just after it got completed.

‘The spark’ if I could describe it, it’s like the joy and a feeling of satisfaction after one sees the expected result of an exam. Feeling is blissful rather than excitement. This feeling is the approval from your heart and mind to you. Now you do not need the approval of anyone else. That was the ‘finish line tape’ for me.

I still keep working on my creations (be them articles/ fictions/ animation/ digital marketing or any other thing) until I reach that ‘finish line emotion’. ‘The spark’, I call it.

Anyway, I was overwhelmed by my own story, vision. All my readers, some known, some random, encouraged me to write more and more.  And from there my journey as a writer started.

Year 2011:

 I kept putting up a few more posts not so frequently. The years passed. In 2011 I got married to the love of my life. I was in a fresher‘s phase in my career in animations and in married life too. A free bird was now struggling to cope up with her guards. New office, new kitchen, new people and the eyes of an audience composed of all old relations…. I had too much on my plate. Within all these there was only one thing which used to make me relaxed, was my pursuit of learning to write.  I wanted to write more and more, pour it all out. Juggling to manage time frames, I still somehow stole a little of it, and came up with some theories of learning, some ideas of fictions. Some life lessons and a few more stuff.

I started working as a freelance technical writer along with my job, and making money out of it. Soon I started getting very exciting and a variety of projects, like writing self-learning materials for open universities, Sales training program for Future group of Industries, Website content development for MMRDA and many more. When I worked on these projects, I got that ‘Spark’ immediately. That was the time I was making money from what I exactly wanted to do. Also as a freelancer the projects were fixed terms, so I used to get ample time to do extra things.

But due to this work satisfaction, my Blog was kept on hold for a long time.  I used to sometimes plan to put something on it. I also learned the technical ways for ‘how to earn from blogs’. Unfortunately, the very short time available to me was not enough to implement the ideas. But the knowledge was increasing. I was more updated on blogging while not at all working on it. It’s like, I was exploring the routes on map, long before I started the journey. All the rough work was fruitful in the future, when I had no time and could directly start my blog.  

Year 2015:

I was blessed with my son and I embraced motherhood. I started getting the spark after accomplishment of motherhood duties. Writining, work, animations left all of that right there and took up my home, my home management indoor outdoor tasks, my son and my husband! Not to forget the battle to save my motherhood instincts and decisions from the constant mocking of the rest of the world. I enjoyed every bit of it. It was all beautiful.

Year 2016:

Soon I found my super active child needed to be among a lot of people. And I needed to go back to work. And here happened, the entry of dilemmas: To work or not? Maid or day-care ? Cook or Self- made Food? Work from home or office?  Now when I look back, all these questions were not as complicated as they troubled my mind, emotions and health. All our decisions depend on the needs, availability, situations, and the willingness of your child and family to support. They are always, almost clear in our subconscious. And we all do dare to take them also. It’s just that, the nervousness to make it successful, drains us initially.

Anyway, the job gave me money, people and confidence. But yet, this time, the spark was missing.  In a short time, I was irritated, flustered, and drained. I tried to steal time to write, but no luck. This time, Motherhood was added to my responsibilities. Everything was overflowing and I was still hungry. My patience started breaking down, and as I did not even have time to steal, therefore I started snatching it by demanding some time frame for myself. And I am lucky to have a husband who understands and contributes to my passion.

This year, I focused on one concept and worked on my first pure fiction, “A ghost tale of love”. While vision was just an expression, this story was a whole process to start from scratch. This story had introduced me to the process of developing a whole story, out of just a thought. My story finished and this time I shared it with a few friends in emails. And added to my pleasure, it got an overwhelming response. Still it had yet to find a platform.

June 2017

As I decided to take up writing full time, I started to work on my own blog. I decided to own a blog and run it myself.  Until now  I knew ‘how to do it?’ and ‘what things will be required?’ But I was clueless about ‘what to put on it?’ Again a  process was initiated, just like it did when I stepped into ‘Blogger’

To start with, what will be the niche of my blog? I am being a ‘Multipotentialite’ , I was not agreeing upon sticking to a particular niche. [A multipotentialite is a person who has no “one true calling” and has many different interests and creative pursuits in life]. I wanted to keep myself free to write random things. This way I could offer variety and surprises to my readers. But I wanted to be highly structured and organized. 

I reached the pros and cons of ‘multiple niches vs single niches blogs’ and came to a conclusion that it absolutely depends on the writer’s goals and interests. Both are equally capable of reaching the skies.

When I was open to the subjects being displayed on the blog, I was also looking for a theme/ Concept to tie them all up in one thread.

In this process, the first question I asked myself was what I was going to put on it? Subjects were random, fiction stories, poetries, digital marketing training articles, finances, spiritual writing, and some real life experiences about buying houses, loans, insurance policies etc. I found out, all I wanted to do was to share my experiences, so that somebody could benefit from it and be somehow less troubled as I was.  And these experiences are from the crucial phases of life, where we all get restless, due to lack of real-time information, or choosing the wrong options.  

So my concept became, “Sharing real experiences/ and information about a task, in a guided manner to decrease the chaos and making people relaxed on its path.”  This is what we do in general; we share our experiences with friends, so that they should get less anxious while doing the same tasks.

After the Theme, I had to decide the name. I kept brainstorming along with working on the design, look and titles. Thousands of names had failed my approval. I dug out every possible well, name generators on the web, books names, other websites, friends, family, and whatnot, but nothing has reached my ‘finished line tape’, the spark .

Parallely, out of nowhere, the feeling of null was running within myself. I started to think, what is the purpose of my life? And while researching for this spiritual query of my own mind, I found out that the purpose of human life is to breathe peacefully.

Bingo!!!I connected this theory to my concept.  I wanted to make people less anxious and breathe peacefully, with the content put on my blog. I wanted the people to catch their breaths when they are out of them. And hence, the blog is called ’Catch your breath’.

Year2018:

I jumped into the pool of technical tools I required to build the blog. Website design, Word press website building, Hosting platforms, animated logo, Structure and categories of the content, digital marketing strategies, etc. I was again in studying mode. To be honest, I did not enjoy all of that. It was like, when we learn a new skill, let us say swimming, we struggle. We get exhausted, body pains. All the time until we can comfortably leave our bodies on the water, we get tempted to leave.

Similarly, many times I wanted to leave it. And all those times I just used to take short breaks and then come back.  Any learning phase brings frustration, fear, avolition, discouragement and all of that. I also sailed through the same sea.

When I was writing my first post to be launched with the website ‘Catch your breath, I was actually lacking them. Most of the time while writing, I felt like, How will I justify, if I myself cannot follow. But then it was neither easier to write nor to follow.  With all doubts in my mind, I was constantly trying hard to follow what I meant.

And finally got the spark back at the launch of the ‘Catch your breath’ on 11th September, from the living room of my home. The Dhols were being played, and everyone was celebrating Lord Ganesha’s festival. I got delayed by a month to launch and it happened in such a holy atmosphere, among celebrating vibes, with the blessing of Lord Ganesh. It had to happen that way.

One and half years of ’Catch your breath’, and my journey is still continuing. I never tried to push it up nor did I leave it to stay back. It’s growing up at its own pace, like my son did, naturally and calmly. I still wait for each article to reach up to the mark I have put on. As soon as it creates’ the spark’ the article is published.  And I am enjoying this journey just like we did enjoy the journeys to our nanihaal in the summers of our childhood.

‘’Chhuk- chhuku Chukku Chukku Ageen gaadi , Dhuranchya Resha havet Sodi, Palati jhade pahuya… mamachya gavala Jauya..ssssss””

The current Year 2024- Now  Catch your breath is taking a pause from the web and getting ready to come back “In a new Form, Audio Visual”  Soon I will be back with the content having the goal of Catch Your breath philosophy to Share with the world.