Nine years of blogging

Its 9 years since I started writing this blog.

This would go down in history as yet another stat, that only 2 people are interested in - one me and the other, my alterego. In twitter dialect, we would call it #uselessStat. There are more #uselessStats that I can share here - number of readers, numbers of visitors, hits etc. But then who cares. Apparently its engagement that rates higher than stats on online media properties. And on engagement parameters, if not negative, I score a zero. I have often tried to find a reason for it but I havent been able to. Engagement is zero, may be because I am not a writer (or a photographer or a social media expert or funny or sarcastic or something). Would you guys know of this? Can someone help me figure out? No, I cant pay money but I can give references and I can give credit.

Coming on to my 9 years, these have been brilliant to say the least. I have loved every bit of these 9 long years. Amongst other things, I have been fortunate to meet some great people and as a result, have learnt quite a few things. Blogging is one of those decisions that I cant stop thanking myself for (#shamelessSelfPromotion). If I had my way, I would ask everyone to experiment with it, at least once.

And like everything else that I do, I have done various experiments with this blog. Some of the noteworthy ones include...

• A private blog. I made this a private blog and closed access to the world. I allowed just a handful of people. No one took a note, not even the ones I invited. I let it remain an invite only blog for a bit and then I reverted to the regular boring open-to-all blog. I reazlied I was missing the entire point of writing a blog - self expression, in an attempt of "getting discovered". 
• Make money from the blog. There was a time when the entire world decided that twitter is the way to go and the number of serious writers reduced. And then at the same time, the crop of new generation that spends copious amounts of time on the Internet, was yet to grow up. Those were sunshine days for my blog with lot of traffic and lot of comments. And then I got this email from Google that said I could make money. I got lured in and I tried it for exactly 6 days. I did make 60 cents, I think, but that was about it and I shut it down.
• Get serious about writing. I started writing about myself and things that were important to me. Somewhere along the way, I got deluded into believing that I could bring about change with limited understanding of life and world. And I tried that by writing serious things and detailed posts. And I failed miserably. I learnt my lessons and I have moved on from that. Now I merely talk about things I see and observe. 

Despite all these failed experiments, thankfully, for whatever reasons, I never fell in the trap of publishing pictures of cats talking in bad grammar or publishing top ten lists about every obscure thing on the internet or participating in trolls on the Internet. I though, however, want to create a photoblog, a travel blog, a writing blog and a poker blog. May be sometime soon.

But this has remained an individual's blog for all these years and will hopefully remain that. A place where I talk about things that interest me and things that I am keen on. I do chase serendipity like crazy. There are times that my interests have a broad base and this is when I get to meet interesting people. I believe that the concept of happy accidents is a brilliant thing. And the blog has helped me get involved in these accidents often. In fact one of the key reasons to continue with writing, despite almost no new visitors, is the hope that some more lucky accidents would happen.

Thats about it. Ideally there should be a cake cutting and all that but I think I will leave it for the 10th anniversary. Come to think of it, 9 years is a long long time. When I started, I would have been 21. I had no clue I would continue for this long. Pat on the back, Mr. Garg.

Oh, btw, is it 9th or the 10th year? I started in 2004!