As the title suggests, I wanted to make a fresh start. Well, fresh"ish" start. I started this blog a while back. To be more accurate, I started this blog as a way to document my first internship experience at IIT Madras. It was the summer of 2007, more than 10 years ago (phew!). I was very excited about the internship, mainly because it was my first opportunity at taking responsibility. It was the first time I felt that my work would matter for someone (my internship mentor and coordinator) other than myself. I felt very energetic about going to a new place, entering a new work environment, and achieving something. That energy made me experiment with a lot of things. It was the first time I was doing network coding, the first time I worked on an iMac, and also, the first time I was part of a demo at a workshop.
Out of the sheer joy of experimentation, I started exploring the internet. I discovered many cool websites and web services, two of the most notable being Picasso (Google's image hosting service) and Blogger (Google's blog service). I thought, why not document my internship experience using the new tools I have discovered (at least, that is what I remember now). So I created a blog. I thought the blog would also help me get some attention. Most importantly, I heard that writing a blog would give you practice writing English and it would come in handy while preparing statements for graduate school.
My previous blog had all the ingredients of a below-average blog. A cliche about myself; a dramatic description of the mildly interesting places I visited; and also an exaggerating description of the moderate challenges I faced at work. Also, my blog was littered with spelling and grammar mistakes. My English was (is?) terrible, or, at least uninteresting. To make the blog posts interesting (at least that is what I thought), I created an album in Picasso, generated the <html code> of the slideshow for the album, and embedded it each of the blog posts. Looking back and evaluating it, I think it did make the blog more bearable. I am frankly a bit surprised that the 2007-me had such an enthusiasm and did put a bit of thought and energy in the blog. I think I would not give a failing grade to my blog.
You might be wondering, well, where are those posts? I hid the posts. I read my previous blog posts (all 4 of them) and thought they were absolutely horrible. While hiding them, I felt semi-wise. I am wise enough to realize that the blog posts were bad, but also not wise enough to accept them. I debated about hiding them for a few minutes and realized that I am in this bizarre semi-wise stage and eventually decided to hide them. It made more sense because I want to start writing about a wide range of topics and not just my internship experience. I think I will publish those blog posts when I become wise enough to accept them.
I could create a new blog, but I paused for a while and decided not to. Dealing with digital media, in my opinion, made it very easy to erase history and make a fresh start. It struck me that historic attempts at erasing the past and creating a "fresh" start were mostly unsuccessful. I think there is no fresh start, there are only fresh-ish starts. Whatever I created in 2007, is a part of me. I might not be comfortable to show it to the world, yet. Hopefully, I will grow wise enough to publish them someday.
Why the fresh-ish start you ask? I want to start documenting some of my experiences in a blog again. I want to write more broadly about travel, research, books, education, talks, opinions, etc. Hopefully, I will post periodically in this blog. Stay tuned.
Out of the sheer joy of experimentation, I started exploring the internet. I discovered many cool websites and web services, two of the most notable being Picasso (Google's image hosting service) and Blogger (Google's blog service). I thought, why not document my internship experience using the new tools I have discovered (at least, that is what I remember now). So I created a blog. I thought the blog would also help me get some attention. Most importantly, I heard that writing a blog would give you practice writing English and it would come in handy while preparing statements for graduate school.
My previous blog had all the ingredients of a below-average blog. A cliche about myself; a dramatic description of the mildly interesting places I visited; and also an exaggerating description of the moderate challenges I faced at work. Also, my blog was littered with spelling and grammar mistakes. My English was (is?) terrible, or, at least uninteresting. To make the blog posts interesting (at least that is what I thought), I created an album in Picasso, generated the <html code> of the slideshow for the album, and embedded it each of the blog posts. Looking back and evaluating it, I think it did make the blog more bearable. I am frankly a bit surprised that the 2007-me had such an enthusiasm and did put a bit of thought and energy in the blog. I think I would not give a failing grade to my blog.
You might be wondering, well, where are those posts? I hid the posts. I read my previous blog posts (all 4 of them) and thought they were absolutely horrible. While hiding them, I felt semi-wise. I am wise enough to realize that the blog posts were bad, but also not wise enough to accept them. I debated about hiding them for a few minutes and realized that I am in this bizarre semi-wise stage and eventually decided to hide them. It made more sense because I want to start writing about a wide range of topics and not just my internship experience. I think I will publish those blog posts when I become wise enough to accept them.
I could create a new blog, but I paused for a while and decided not to. Dealing with digital media, in my opinion, made it very easy to erase history and make a fresh start. It struck me that historic attempts at erasing the past and creating a "fresh" start were mostly unsuccessful. I think there is no fresh start, there are only fresh-ish starts. Whatever I created in 2007, is a part of me. I might not be comfortable to show it to the world, yet. Hopefully, I will grow wise enough to publish them someday.
Why the fresh-ish start you ask? I want to start documenting some of my experiences in a blog again. I want to write more broadly about travel, research, books, education, talks, opinions, etc. Hopefully, I will post periodically in this blog. Stay tuned.
Comments