D and me were talking about life in general. I was answering her claim that everybody expected her to act a certain way.

"But isn't that fair enough," I asked. " I mean isn't it natural for people to expect that you'll give them what they want?"

"It's very unfair to me," she said.

Maybe. But at least in my professional life, I've learnt the art of balance, the art of giving what others want while making sure that I get what I want simply cos they feel indebted to giving me what I want. But the conversation with D remained...

Later that night, I told another D who is working on his thesis for philosophy of all things "Everybody wants only the good bits of you. So if everybody wants only the good bits and you keep distributing THAT out, what you are left with at the end of a long day is the bad bits. That's the only thing you are allowed to keep...by default, simply cos nobody ELSE wants it."

In his usual eccentric way, D noted it down to use for his thesis...or so he said...he's collecting "original thoughts" as part of his exercise. But though it was said quite flippantly at the time, later that evening, I realised that it was the truth in some sense.

So...the people who get the brunt of MY unwanted bits is (1) God, whom I question and query and ever so often throw tantrums at (2) my immediate family who will be affected by all the negative energy (the pent up frustration, the suppressed irritation, the where am I going from here) (3) my blog

Anyways....the reason I'm wondering is that something has just happened which has made me wonder about this blog. I mean why do I keep it and am I really projecting myself?

So…I’ve been reading the last few posts objectively. And I agree that the blog isn’t in the least reflective of the REAL me. (Cos one of my bestest friends in REAL life came across the blog and he didn't even REALISE it was me! When he finally figured, I have a strong feeling it's cos of my views on God....he'll have to read this and tell me if that's the case... ) That in the blog, I come across as extremely serious and extremely depressed and disillusioned, though in actuality, I am a rather ‘sunny’ person.

For instance, when we had a round of games at work, the thing most people universally agreed about me was that I was “Always cheerful.” Or as my secret writer put it, “Always smiling.”

!!!! I know that my virtual personality would get a rude shock on being told that!:p And so would my blog pals.

Someone told me that my life is not as miserable as I make it out to be. Course it’s not! That goes without saying.

Lol…this is my drama queen mode. It’s where I look at my 'self' through a magnifying glass, a microscope. But why your ‘self’, he asked? Cos heck, I can TALK about my new fish tank, or the new gift or the joke at work with ANYBODY. Why would I need to be an anonymous entity to do that??

But I can’t go discuss the vagaries of the ‘self’ with anybody!

But why even think so much, my sis will ask. Lol…I don’t know the answer to that in all honesty. One simple reason is that my job requires me to sit at a comp for 8 hours and it's not a job where I interact too much with people. Also, unless you're working on a campaign, the days are REALLY slow. That leaves me with a lot of 'vela' time and vela time is a devil's workshop.

But that apart, I think we all do think—whether we’re aware of it or not, there’s a constant monologue going on within our heads. The point is whether we really wanna tune in and how frequently we do it. I know people who won’t do it, till life splatters them against a wall and they HAVE to. And then, they are so outta touch with who they’ve turned out to be that they are clueless on how to proceed.

Like my friend who “falls in love” every few months. Every few months, a girl comes along and he's convinced it's ‘the one.’ Obviously, he hasn’t tuned in to make a few observations or take a few learnings along with him. I don’t even listen totally to his stories about ‘her’ cos I SO know that a few weeks or a few months from now, I’m gonna have to remove her name and replace it with a new one!

If only he’d just pause and THINK, even if it meant that he wouldn’t come out as such a ‘dude’ on his blog, he might have stopped looking so FOOLISH in real life.

Also, my blog is where I get to crib and rave and rant and fume so that when I meet the real world, I can be “always cheerful” and “always smiling.” At my assessment process, A, my boss scored me really high on interpersonal skills…now how the HECK would I ever have done that without my blog where I can be the anti-social princess trapped in a tower!

I think the reason behind all those dictums of “stop blogging” ensues from the assumption that others blog for the same reasons you do. I think every blogger is out here for very many reasons, sometimes a mixture of very many reasons…for me, blogging is where I re-centre myself. It’s where I spew out all the negativism I feel, so I can be centered in real life. After all, the bad bits need to go somewhere.

With God...I've other issues to discuss...other more important issues that I really need to find answers for ASAP. I can't give my folks the bad bits either cos they'd just give me *one tight slap* and ask me to stop cribbing. So, the 'bad' bits invariably find their way to the blog.

It’s where I think aloud when I am feeling low cos I couldn’t for the life of me, sit across a table and share my doubts, fears, insecurities and misty ponderings with anybody for REAL.

I don’t feel the need to blog about the times I’ve laughed in a day ,or had a good time and a few laughs... cos it’s happened! It's over and that's that. You don’t need to give any closer thought to it. There’s no analysis required in the fact that everyday after lunch we scramble down to have kulfi. Or, that come this Thursday, I am gonna be part of a music band *grin* Or, that starting Feb, I am gonna be learning Salsa! I’d be bored even WRITING about those things.

(Ok....the music band...I guess it's only fair I write about that. But I think I'd be too excited to write about it!!!! My legs are goin tap-tap-tap even beginning to THINK about it!! No way can I WRITE about it.)

And some comments really help me look at things from a wholly new perspective. And after I am done being miserable, when I look back, I realize that in spite of thinking it was…it WASN’T the end of the world after all, that there’s always hope and that nothing is so bad as it seems to be.

Strangely enough, after I’ve thrown out the despair, all that I am left with is hope! Catharsis…yeah…I guess THAT’S the word. The oldest reason anybody ever wrote!

For anybody who wants to ‘judge me by the contents of the blog,’ go get a life cos you are so obviously shallow and think that the person can be circumscribed to random blog entries!