Of changes, milestones and gratitude

I have been a late and fairly recent entrant to blogging, have been reading some blogs regularly for over three years now, but somehow never thought of blogging myself. I thought I'd have nothing to write, I thought I have nothing worth saying, that anyone would like to pay attention to and come and read my posts...so just remained a blog reader....

I accidentally started blogging one day...actually what triggered it had been a response to another blogger on their blog, I wrote a few very loooong responses on that blog as to my perspective on the issue, and that just flipped a switch in me, making me realize that I do certainly seem to have opinions on everything, and maybe should document my own perspective on some things as well...
I'll admit, one of the things, that made me somewhat wary of starting blogging, is that my views don't fall in line with popular Indian views on most cases, I've always had a tendency of questioning society's status quo, and challenging cultural norms, even growing up in personal life, and this had earned me the tag of too radical, too feminist, too 'americanized' etc etc...so I was wary of similar backlash on my blog as well...when I do start expressing my opinion, since I'm someone, who never likes to leave things sourly say if I'd have an arguement with someone on my blog, over a topic, I'd get upset over that....It sounds very silly, I admit, it does...but that's just the way I am...even in life, I am never at ease after having an argument with anyone, everything inside me wants to do anything it takes to patch things up, so I didn't know how I'd handle being criticized on this blog and whether I'd be able to develop a thick enough skin for it, but I finally decided to test the waters and see for myself.

Despite my initial reservations, blogging actually was the best thing I've done in a long time in life, it was a great way to put down my views on various topics in the written word, and have it out there, naked on the internet. The response from so many of my fellow bloggers has been overwhelmingly friendly, and thoughtful. I've been very lucky thus far, to never even experience a serious backlash, if and when the time comes, I'll cross that bridge when I get to it.
For now, I'm grateful to have discovered a whole world of brilliant bloggers who were hitherto unbeknownst to me. I also realized that there are actually a ton of other female bloggers whose thoughts and views resonate with me a lot, and felt relived to have other women who I could identify with.

I never wanted to write a personal blog, as my life isn't that interesting and there's really nothing about it, that I'd like to discuss with people, it's a very simple, plain vanilla kinda life, have a loving, supporting husband, a kid too cute to be called mine, parents and in-laws who've loved and supported me through anything and everything, so there isn't much material there to write about,  the most interesting part of my life was actually my move to North America a few years ago, opening up a whole new world to me in terms of cross-cultural points of views, giving me an oppurtunity to look at my own culture, my own heritage through new eyes, in ways I had never seen it before...so naturally this is where most of blogging is focused on....

Okay, so there are some things I need to address in this post. Since the inception of the blog, I've made quite a few changes to the blog, have transformed the look of the blog more than once, the current one is actually one that I, personally like the best, but I also was looking for feedback from all of you, who visit my blog regularly, on how you find the current backdrop of the blog, and whether you preferred any of the previous ones more.
There have also been other changes like additional features to the blog, like I've added links to my twitter and facebook page for the blog. You can follow me there as well, if you'd like. I've made some awesome friends through blogging, and am actually very grateful to have met such wonderful people through blogging.

One other important piece of development is that in the relatively short time that I've been blogging, I've been lucky enough to find some appreciation and encouragement through several online resources. I got my first blogging award (thanks again sujatha) and loved getting it :D. I've been asked to contribute to some online magazines. My first contribution to an online magazine 'NRI matters' was published recently, you can read the post here. I will be sure to fill you in when future articles get published.
Last but not the least, a couple of my posts have been appreciated by a popular blogging networking site, blogadda, who featured them on their site as a part of their weekly picks . The first one was my post on independence day and the more recent one was my last post on the documentary film sita sings the blues .

Blogging truly opened up a whole new world for me, and for that I'm actually thankful to all those who take the time and effort to drop by my blog and leave your own thoughts/opinions/feedback. That is the part which I love most of blogging, and look forward to interactions with you all. So here's a big thankyou and a bigger hug to all my blogging friends, who made blogging so satisfying for someone who'd never thought she had anything worth writing. Thankyou indeed.