The beginning

The start of anything new in life is one of the most cherished experiences of life. There is so much to look forward to, so much you want to do and all at once. It takes all your effort and determination just to ensure that the pace is not breathtakingly and unmaintainably fast, but a steady, long lasting one. You want to spend all your time engrossed only in that, and everything else seems like a waste of time. But alas, life does not work that way and maybe thankfully so. You drag yourself through the mundane tasks of the day just so you can get back to your newest addiction even though you were never really away from it. It was on your mind all the time. You can see traces of it in the errors that creep into your daily tasks, the visible slowdown in efficiency, the increase in tolerance levels for undesirable elements around you, as if nothing they do can possibly offset the positive feelings in your head. I could go on and on..but I am sure you get the drift. That’s the magical power of a beginning, the beginning of something beautiful, something exciting, possibly full of adventure and definitely an enriching part of your life that will stay with you forever, no matter the direction it takes post this phase.

The Dilemma

Its now almost a month since my new blog and its first entry. A month of thinking about topics to write about, thinking through the basic outline for each of those topics, and then ditching the thought of writing in favour of a game of Warcraft!! The topics that have floated in and out of my head include

1] an exploration of why average amount of clothes on a woman is significantly lesser than that on a man, especially on TV, inspired by the swimsuit round in the Miss Universe contest. Seriously, if there were a swimsuit round in a Mr World contest, I am sure its TRP would drop to zero. While people will say it’s a confirmation of male domination in todays society, I don’t understand why the women agree to it in the first place! However, I digress. This post is not on that. I hope I come back to it sometime later

2] the difference between a vacation and business travel, even if and actually especially, if the place happens to be an exotic location. This time I shall not digress, and in all probability, this post will never see the light of the day

This post is about a dilemma that occupies a lot of my time and it concerns an individuals privacy. Not his right to privacy, but about the appropriateness of revealing personal details, especially given the abundance of available media to indulge in such pursuits. Please note, this is not a rant on how good or bad it is to be doing that, but an exploration into why people might want to do such a thing, and more importantly, where do you draw the line.

For instance, and most of the examples in this post will be my life, as I think this post will eventually, if not already, meander into a public exploration of my feelings on the subject, which I think already concludes the debate before even beginning it, in a way. So once again, for instance, having written this blog entry, should I go ahead and announce to the world that I have put up a new entry on my blog, and then having done that, eagerly wait for people to read and comment on it, and feel happy or sad based on the number and tone of the comments? I know of a few million people who do that, which in itself gives the act a basic credibility in terms of mass support.

Or maybe, I could just quietly let the people I know and care about know that there is a new piece written by me which again, they should read and comment on and…..(the rest is same as in previous paragraph). That is exactly what I had done with the previous post, and I find myself feeling bad about using my relationship with people as a social obligation to read it just because they are related to me (I blame Sheldon Cooper of ‘Big Bang Theory’ for the tone of this statement)

Or I could just put it up and be happy that it is up. That, I think, kind of defeats the basic premise of a blog. If I wanted to do that, I could as well write something and keep it in a folder on my computer and the purpose would be served.

For some reason, I like the third option better. And that is exactly what I am going to do with this post. That way, I don’t expect people to read and comment on it, and everytime someone does, it feels good. But if no one does, it still does not feel bad.

However, inspite of all my efforts, I have still digressed, as this post was supposed to be about privacy in general and not just one example. So I shall stop here for now as this is too long already and continue with more examples in subsequent posts. Next up…Facebook!