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Posts tagged ‘Blogging’

Jan 8

12 Comments

Are We Losing Our Identity to Social Media?

Some of you may be familiar with the story of how I was threatened to be sued by a restaurant for a negative review. I refrained from telling my parents to keep them from getting worked up, until they stumbled upon my blog. Fail.

Many of us are tending toward a high external locus of control, which is to say that we change ourselves, our behavior, our thinking, our attitude, as many times in a day as our environment changes. This is becoming increasingly true, and challenging, with our addiction to social media platforms that allow us to assume pretentious personas not meant for everyone.

Professional identity

We all pay close attention to maintaining our reputation as subject matter experts in the workplace; a necessity for people to take us and what we do seriously. However, our publicly open social media presence is diluting that identity. Would you use Twitter / Facebook the same way if you knew your boss or co-workers were scrutinizing your every tweet / update?

twitter, boss, facebook, work

Family identity

Whether it’s your family or kids, this is a tricky one. There is a line in our social life beyond which everything is out-of-bound to anyone whose related by blood. If your mom is on Facebook, you know what I’m talking about. Someday, when our kids read our tweets, we’ll want to hide our heads under the bed and wish we had been addicted to alcohol, or something else that’s offline instead.

twitter, family, mother, son

Personal identity

This one is the most boggling of all. Juggling who we are in the workplace, with that at home, with that online, can be quite a handful in itself. Add to that all the alternative online presences we juggle – from being socially acceptable on Facebook, to finding a geeky niche on Twitter, to getting headhunted on Linkedin, to gaining credibility as genre experts in the blogosphere, the list goes on.

Among all these avatars we can so magically transform ourselves into, can we even remember who we really are? Who are we, really?

Oct 12

17 Comments

A dry spell

The oasis of thoughts is running dry

Unkind is the trajectory of time

Between dreaming and doing

Imagination has sketched a fine line.

Aug 23

15 Comments

Of this & that

This is not a comeback post.

Pledge: I have decided to stop blaming my work-life imbalance, fleeting weekends, social obligations, and deadened-by-work-thought flow for my persistent inactivity in the blogosphere. I hereby pledge to revive my blogging life.

061229_will_blog_for_food

Awards: This one is long due. Thanks to Aadil for awarding me The Lemonade Blog award, and to Valerine & Varun for the International Bloggers Community award. I hereby pass these awards to Thethoughtfultrain, Manchitra & Jayesh for their comforting presence in the blogosphere.

lemonade-blog-award1ibc award

Corporate  woes: I dedicate this to all my fellow-mates in the corporate jungle. Cheers to survival!

Mini book review: Tin Fish, a book about an adolescent’s boarding school life, post the emergency period in India. It’s a walk down memory lane, a back-to-the-basics lesson in friendship, and a breezy read to momentarily transport you from the complexities of adulthood. (Author – Sudeep Chakravarty)

Advice: I have been aching to learn something new, something radically different. Any advice, besides a language, an instrument & a sport? Lately, I have also been fantasizing about freelance writing. Any tips?

Aug 13

5 Comments

Tick-tock

The blogosphere, it seems, it steadily disintegrating itself from my life. I crave to get my blogging and blog-stalking hours back. Damn inefficient time management in life outside of work, as though it doesn’t flaunt its ugly head all day anyway. I’m 3 weeks old in the working world, not yet neck-deep in work, and already begging for an extension in my 24-hour days. Slow down time, prithee.

If I write any more in this brain-dead state, this post will be nothing short of a rant. So here goes, one of few those chain mail poems that I still remember and find very apt at this point:

Have you ever watched kids
On a merry-go-round?
Or listened to the rain
Slapping on the ground?
Ever followed a butterfly’s erratic flight?
Or gazed at the sun into the fading night?

You better slow down
Don’t dance so fast
Time is short
The music won’t last.

Do you run through each day
On the fly?
When you ask How are you,
Do you hear the reply?
When the day is done,
Do you lie in your bed
With the next hundred chores
Running through your head?

You’d better slow down
Don’t dance so fast
Time is short
The music won’t last.

Ever told your child,
We’ll do it tomorrow?
And in your haste,
Not see his sorrow?
Ever lost touch,
Let a good friendship die
Cause you never had time
To call and say,’Hi’ ?

You’d better slow down.
Don’t dance so fast.
Time is short.
The music won’t last.

When you run so fast to get somewhere
You miss half the fun of getting there.
When you worry and hurry through your day,
It is like an unopened gift,
Thrown away.

Life is not a race
Do take it slower
Hear the music
Before the song is over.

May 1

21 Comments

Happy Birthday Blog!

T hree-6-5 days ago, this was just another wordpress.com weblog

H ere its umbilical chord was cut, it became The Shooting Star.

E nchanted by its first post, first reader & first comment, this blog

S ang its way into the blogosphere, with cliched themes & bizarre.

H ome to 105 posts & graced by 16,000 readers, now is a moment

O f reflection & joy, and gratitude & celebration.

O nce upon a time, a blog was merely meant

T o be a goofy forum; today it redefines communication

I n a world where time & ideas are hard to find.

N ow I deviate from this happy, proud occasion,

G lad indeed that The Shooting Star has defined

S omething in my life that was once mere anticipation.

T hrough this journey, my blog has become a part of me

A s I write this, I think about the future and what has been

R eally, all I want to say is, dear blog, Happy Birthday!

happy_birthday_stars

On The Shooting Star’s first birthday, I must thank all my fellow bloggers for keeping me company through this incredible journey! A special thanks to Amit, Premanjali, Varun, Radhika, Aadil,  Akanksha, Pranav, Jayesh & Mahak.

The Blogosphere would be so lonely without all of you :D

Mar 2

9 Comments

Social media

I recently discovered that a lot of people are unaware of the social media phenomenon, even though they are very much a part of it. As a believer in the power of social media, I owe this post to them.

Simply put, social media collectively describes all tools that enable people to talk online. Often interchangeably used with the term Web 2.0, social media consists of social networks like Facebook, content sharing sites like Youtube and Flickr, blogging platforms like WordPress and Blogger, and user-generated information sources like Wikipedia. The term, coined only recently, is creating waves in the PR world. It is a colossal avenue for people to share their insights, opinions and knowledge, through interaction with others like them on the World Wide Web. 

Currently, the size of the social media community is estimated at 400 million. According to a study by Strategy Analytics, by 2015, 1 in every 6 people will be users of social media platforms.

Billion dollar companies like Dell, Starbucks and Coca-Cola are reinventing themselves through social media and reconnecting with their stakeholders. Here is a comprehensive list of businesses that have forayed into the social media space. The days of mass advertising and spamming are behind us. 

My digital media class in college created a wiki that analyzes the past and future of social media in various countries across Asia. Even though my contribution to the wiki was Japan specific, my research exposed me to the promising world of social media. It’s when I began to look past my Facebook newsfeed, and at the bigger picture. I am a fan of Seth Godin’s blog and his ideas, and I ocassionally read what Guy Kawasaki and Mitch Joel blog about.

The following is the simplest video I could find to explain the concept of social media.

Sep 16

13 Comments

The Blogosphere – my second home

What started as my lonely little space on the world wide web has integrated into a community of bloggers-turned-friends, rather fast. Well, virtual friends. It took me a while to realize that the blogosphere is full of some amazing people, writers, acquaintances, readers, visitors, even stalkers!

I am very honored and rather touched to receive my first ever set of blogging awards today, from a fellow blogger, Nikhil.

Thanks Nikhil! Blogging friends forever indeed! 

Honestly, I’m not too sure what the 2nd award implies. Oops, honesty I suppose.

I’ve seen such blogging awards on some blogs I’ve visited in the past, and today, when I finally became a recipient, I started to explore the origin of these awards. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find much, except the blogs of fellow award winners. So now, I’m quite convinced that someone, somewhere, woke up one morning and thought of creating a way to appreciate the efforts of bloggers who kept him entertained on mundane days, informed on busy days, and connected on lonely days,. A way to strengthen blogging bonds among blogging friends in the blogging space. What a noble thought, Mr-blogging-awards-creator.

Oh, I did stumble upon the following rules to keep the blogging awards rolling:

- Only 5 people are allowed to receive this award.
- 4 of them must be followers of your blog.
- One must be new to your blog and live in another part of the world.
- You must link back to who ever gave you the award.

I hereby pass these blogging awards to:

Aadil, whose poetry inspires me.

Neilina, whose words are innocent and honest.

Akanksha, a childhood friend who I reconnected with on the blogosphere.

Now that I’m sort of caught in the moment, thanks to all you people for reading my blog, for all your comments, and your invaluable words of appreciation, warmth, wisdom and encouragement. Gracias. :)

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