Belated Post: Why This Darn Blog Is Still Around After 4 Years

So the friends at @jtug urged me to write about why blogging is important - to me, to anyone else for that matter, who knows.

I started this blog on the first day of my 'new' life - new job, recently single, totally new outlook in life, and ready to take on the various rituals that lead to maturity. Don't know if I have reached maturity yet, but it sure has been a hell of a ride for the past 4 years.

The title of the blog was once appropriately named 'A New Leaf', but in the process it changed to 'Positivity' to get rid of my depressive vibes. From this fact alone, you can see that blogging for me is a form of therapy - what I write is something in my mind at that moment (and in the mood of writing it), and sharing it with everybody without being too detailed on personal issues. The focus was to express the ambient feelings in my head and heart without burdening everybody with depressive or boring details on what I had for lunch or something.

Writing regularly has surely had its share of changes to my life - because it is a good moment to reflect. Not just what I have done (or not done), but what apparently is OK for public domain to devour and what isn't. Ultimately, it's what you don't say that says a lot about yourself also.

During my writing I found that I write much better in English - not gloating, just a fact - so the dominant language remained that. And through the blog, I have found many friends, and rediscovered old friends also... and I have also found my passion for writing! Some people talk about themselves, some people talk about others, some people talk about their hobbies... but I talk about whatever comes to mind - which apparently is more to social commentary, and how we can make the world a better place. I'm not saying I know better, but I do like to share my thoughts and see how the world sees it.

Plis Deh Jakarta! is a collaborative blog with a friend to look at Jakarta's lighter side, while also getting the social commentaries into readers in a way that isn't force-fed (like the government-sponsored TV ads) or pretentious (like the tobacco-supported PSAs); but just by encouraging people to look at something from a different perspective. This is where I write (or picture blog) more often lately - my therapy writing days are [almost] over.

But I will stay blogging, as it is the easiest way for me to share thoughts in the long form (and not bore people at the dinner table), in conjunction with sporadic use of Twitter and Plurk (and Facebook, of course). Who cares if blogging is so 2004.