Despite having a hotmail account within the first year of its launch, I very consciously and decidedly missed the social media bus of the current times. Despite having so many long standing friendships over the years, I am not at all an active member on Facebook and Orkut. Despite having religiously written my personal diary for almost two decades now, I managed to stay away from the blogging world. Do I regret any of this? No. Then what draws me to open up this Alien Diary to all of you now?
I have been a rebel of some sorts. I challenge everything - from a time tested belief to a well-backed research thesis. I will humbly accept that I have never been kind to any advice - friendly or professional, unless I have myself believed in it. I have often taken decisions against the odds - and while I have been proved right a few times, there have been many occasions when I have failed miserably. But in either case, I have been equally satisfied - as from either situation I have built up immense experience.
Being such a fiercely independent person, you can now perhaps draw your conclusions on why I have stayed away from social media. I do not depend on public opinion for anything I do in my everyday life. So while I am present on social networking sites, I have a clear objective in mind. It is to remain in touch with people I have been associated with in this journey of life, with whom I would have otherwise lost touch with. By remaining in touch, I mean being aware of macro developments in their lives. However, I would not prefer to invade their lives with my temporal feelings, as to start with they would have little context to 'really' empathize with me. Further, if micro-blogging became a habit, I would start to depend on it in everyday life to park my insecurities. And boom! There goes my independence!
So what is it that got me to create this little space for myself in the blogger zone?
Just earlier today - I was engaged in a discussion with a friend on how superior technology combined with social media is breeding mediocrity. That’s a bold statement, I agree, and I will definitely share my thoughts on that in my next post. However, during this discussion, for the first time I realized that I could not convincing put forth my argument as I had not really 'experienced' the power of social media. And what immediately followed was an instant urge to take my first baby steps towards understanding this whole world so 'alien' to me. And given how high I value people's time and my privacy, the blogging space seemed to be the most appealing of the lot!
Unlike before - I now have a clearly defined objective to be here. Which is - to experience the power of reaching out to such a large mass, to understand the challenge of creating an interested audience for myself in this large mass and most importantly to be able to sustain my own independence by not reducing this space as a dumping ground for my insecurities. Once I can do all this, I would perhaps become a little more experienced in making bold statements like the one above.
So, welcome to this Alien's Diary! I hope I can do justice to the time that you spend with my thoughts.
