Tuesday, April 09, 2013

Keep Calm And Enjoy The Silence

It's the second week of the Spring Break and it is eerily quiet here in the Library.  Aside from my daughter, who likes coming to work with me, there's just, well, me!  My colleague Iftikhar had gone for some training in Dubai and I am all to my lonesome self here.  But wait, I'm not really lonely.  I'm alone but quite happy to be alone.  For now.

I can hear the fluorescent lights buzzing at intervals.  I look out the huge library windows and I can see the college cat, pregnant, lazing by the shade of a palm tree.  My daughter is busy watching Hetalia, an anime about countries being people.  I decide to blog.  But what to write?

Blogger and I have this on again, off again relationship for some time now.  When blogging was new, I was at it almost everyday, creating posts like I would in the pages of a diary or personal journal.  But as the years went on the novelty or recording everything I thought about, felt, even ate, lost its allure.  Also, with some malicious people trying to invade your security/private spaces, it's considered a major faux pas to post anything personal in your blogs.  There are just too many con artists and now, the throng of cyber con artists is growing that posting anything personal could lead to your loss of identity or your credit cards being maxed out.  Besides, who would want to know about what you had for breakfast and why would that knowledge be any useful to anyone but yourself?

So I ponder on what I should write about.  Why blog?  About.com gives the top 10 reasons why people blog.  I'm for helping people, sharing information, connecting with friends and family and also satisfying my creativity so I guess, that's why I do blog.  To make money? Yeah, I'd probably like that but I've never figured out how to blog for money.  Blogger is free.  That in itself it already a perk for me!  For fame?  Read this post about mom bloggers, and you can see some of the hidden reasons why many of us blog.  To change the world?  Wow, that's right out there with world peace and keeping the planet green...totally superhero stuff but really, how does that work if no one ever reads your blog?

But it's out there.  My words.  Something old, something new, something borrowed, and maybe some things are blue (blue as in, sad; not the colour).  Like a graffiti on walls, silently screaming "I was here!"  they exist.  Out on the World Wide Web, for anyone to read.  I exist! I live! My blog proves it.

A student arrives, breaking my blog thoughts as he asks for help with his printing.  I tell him he ought to be enjoying himself at home or taking a short trip somewhere now that it is Spring break but he just smiles adding that he's got a million other stuff to do with his project and other assignments.  I ask him, "Do you blog?"  He looks puzzled and shakes his head.  But he tells me he's on Instagram and shows me some photos from his phone.

Words, pictures, recommended songs. wall posts, likes and pokes, tweets and comments.  They may be in different forms but they do seem to show one thing: I'm here!

If aliens from other planets do exists, our years of broadcasting, now add to that pod-casting, online postings, and what nots should have alerted them that, "Hey Martians, we're here!  We exist."  The fluorescent lights' buzzing seem to be like Morse codes, sending signals out to universe, supporting my thoughts as I kill time by keeping calm and blogging on.

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