"VOF Week 3: (Who is reading?)."

I am not sure when I started blogging since I didn’t know that I was blogging! I just found myself very keen on sharing information on the web and had not considered myself a blogger for long!

Many times I am very passionate with my blogs when I have an issue that has caught my attention and emotion. I will write hoping that the person I am targeting gets to read my views. I love the feeling of knowing that I have shared information with relevant persons and that the issues that matter to me also matter to some other people. But does this always happen? It is hard to tell unless people leave comments. Some times this happens and it is very encouraging but some other times there are no comments and I wonder, has anyone been reading this? Many people seem to find leaving comments a bother and hence read blogs and move on, without leaving a trace that they were there. However, worse still is when people leave negative comments! It is disheartening despite the appreciation I have that people have different opinion.

Some other challenge in blogging is time. Being a full time worker it means that I have to do blogging at my own time. Regardless of how important the blogs could be to the community work, this is not viewed as such and hence one always gets the feeling of doing personal work. This therefore means that I don’t get to respond to the comments as I would wish and also don’t get to write as much as I would wish to.

I have recently made arrangements to have internet in the house to give me more time to blog. I am also selective on the sites that I blog and even deregister if it proves not worthwhile or abusive. I especially register where I feel that the site is in congruent to my beliefs and passion and this has helped but it doesn’t mean that it is foolproof. With time I have learnt to accept dissenting and even arrogant views and know when to defend my views and when to keep quiet. Many bloggers are out to criticise and hence I am very keen in noting such and therefore ignoring. Other times people are just misinformed and hence I take the opportunity to elaborate my views by giving more information. All in all this ends up being a learning process.

However this can be threatening to women who lack confidence in themselves or are new to blogging hence there is a need to have blogs like pulse wire which provides safe space for women more publicised. This way there are higher chances that the blogs will also be read by the people targeted. Helping women in grassroots to access email in the localities with the growth of IT and introducing them to blogging will also increase chances of the blogs being read by the relevant persons, then I will be glad someone is reading!