7 ways in which blogging has helped me. 7 reasons why everyone should try it.

My first blog-post went online on 12/08/09. Ever since, I have improved a freaking manifold—as a writer, as an expressionist, as an appreciator of creativity and above all, as a person. Here are the 7 best things to have happened to me, courtesy blogging. If you've been considering taking it up too, this post may serve some purpose. If not, I wish, you do consider this amazing pursuit ...to explore yourself, if nothing else.

1. You can call yourself a writer—and so you are! Well, at least unofficially. Picture this: people spend half a lifetime in churning their brains to come up with some "novel idea" and then the rest half of it, in writing manuscripts for the planned book. Finally, at least fifty thousand words, gallons of ink (or loads of electricity units, for the E-writers) and marathons of runs from one publisher to another later, they are able to enter the literary world/market as "writers", with no certainty that the title will remain with them for long. And here you are, with the requirement of just having to occupy a little space on some free hosting site like Blogger or Wordpress, penning down your content:one-liners, poems, articles, whatever you feel like and finally, clicking on the "publish" button. 1-2-3 and you're ready to call yourself a 'writer'. Now if this is not a meaty deal, what on earth is?!
2. You get to come closer, to grammar—Check out my own first post linked to, above. That was a time and this is one time, and the growth is, but, so obvious. Isn't it? Infact, let me tell you, the linkwithin widget, that shows to you any four random posts below any post, has time and now taken me back to my past works. And reading them through and through, I have even felt embarrassed and subsequently, spent a great deal of time editing them.
   Languages, as subjects, have always been my strongest point, which is why I took up blogging when I had nothing else to do in college—a place minus any co-curricular activities. At that time, I didn't care if people read me, I probably didn't know if fan-pages even existed, 'coz I could have never even imagined having one for my blog. Besides, I was very very new on Facebook. Thus, my internet-language was like most others' : complete with all the shorthands and overused smileys and yes, even stuff like "lolzzzz". * embarrassed*
   Further, don't know why, but I used ellipses(....) so SO much, that one's eyes could cross the boundaries of their monitor, in a bid to reach the next word. My framing of sentences was nothing spectacular either. All in all, my writing was naive. Very naive.
   But no regrets, I wrote only because I wanted to write, to use my free time more creatively. And to make up for the immense loss of creative undertakings that I suffered, after coming to college. One fine day I was so fed up of the lack of life in college life that I suddenly felt the urge to have some place that'd host just what I'd say. I got to know of the existence of something called "blogs" and went BINGO. Today, I'm only too happy that I did. Else, I wouldn't have undergone such phenomenally multi-dimensional growth as a person.
   I've almost always shared a rapport with my language teachers—that may make me sound snobbish, but it was only because Hindi and English were subjects that genuinely interested me. (Though yes, it's only proficiency that begets interest. Be it music, dance, writing, acting etc. If you're good at it, you feel interested in it. *wink*)
   So, my articles and stuff never quite failed to impress people. I wrote articles, even poems, speeches and delivered too many of them on-stage too. I was always appreciated and it felt good. That explains the confidence with which I took up blogging. But, some months into it and I knew, I am not as good as I thought I am. I got to know of the shortcomings of being a non-reader. It's only now that I realize, I may or may not have been good with words, but I was surely not a good writer back then. Not even remotely so.
   One can write simply if he knows how to write. Having said that, writing what you're writing, in a more respectably organized manner, doesn't hurt. Call it "good writing". When you become a blogger, you may start out as a true amateur:new, naive, unlearned. But over time, as you get to see works by other respectable bloggers and get feedback from people—however bitter or sweet, you get to know where you lack.
   What you write can be good only if you are imaginative enough. But how you write can be good if you have all the literary tools handy:the grammar. I can proudly say today, even though I never sucked at it earlier, I wasn't ever as good as it, as I am today. Start blogging, to know what I mean.
3. You build your vocabulary yourself, and don't even realize doing so—May I add, I was always an ardent non-reader. My mom didn't like to see me reading novels. She thought I'd read love-stories and those'd spoil my head. (Moms, actually, are too cutely right all the time. However wrong we may think they are being.) She forced me into reading newspapers though, the editorial section especially. I found it boring. But it helped a bit.
   But I was never, and actually still am not, rich on vocabulary. I never did, and still don't, know words that'd weigh a ton. I was just a little pro (:P) at building sentences since the inception of school life—with all the "Make Sentences" exercises as the building block. Just by hobby, I loved making sentences and always tried coming up with unique ones, teachers always appreciated that. But the truth is, my coffers were never full of impressive idioms, unique words or interesting phrases. A year and a half into blogging, and I know a lot more than I did, back then. Still not much, of course, but much more. I won't get into the nuances of how I facilitated my learning process, since it varies from person to person.
   You need words to write anything and with every new post on your blog, you shall get to know more and more of them. So much so that, you won't even know how.
   Believe me, you can be bad/pathetic/good/great at writing and/or vocabulary. But with blogging, you will most certainly get to go miles further. To put it simply, blog if you want to be way better than how you presently are.
4. You can express your views. And get them heard too!—Who minds getting listeners? Who am I kidding, who manages to get listeners, in this busy world. Everyone is so involved in their own thought-processes that few have the time to pay heed to you and your ramblings. But with a blog, you have all the reasons to say all that you may want to. Don't worry if others are reading or not. No need to spam too. I never did. But as I improved as a writer, so did my posts. And I didn't even know how and when it all went on from one post to another, to a fan-page and to a good number of "followers". I am no stalwart, but it definitely feels good. Thanks to you all. :)
5. You get to "meet" new, potentially interesting people—without even stalking their profiles! Err, yeah.
   So, the blogosphere is really big and as a blogger, some or the other time you are bound to come across/meet/talk to/hear from some of your counterparts—other bloggers. And let me tell you, they are awesome. Except for the fact that some, or rather most, of them could be really creepy spammers, they can actually help you learn a lot:directly or indirectly. Most of the improvement in my writing skills and grammatical-knowledge is courtesy some of my blogger friends. The rest of it, I owe to all those whose posts I happened to read and learn from.
6. You can earn money—I don't. So can't elaborate on how that is feasible, but everyone knows blogging can earn much, if not too much. Even though I have looked into this aspect, searched on it in the past, I am certainly not the best person to talk on it. One can easily find tips for it allover the internet.
   One thing though, you can't expect to move mountains in terms of earnings, through blogging. Particularly blogging that's not niche blogging.
7. You get to learn new things—And I'm not talking about vocab or grammar. I mean they are also there obviously, but not just them. There's a lot more you can learn through blogging. Like if I tell you about myself, I've been incredibly low on technical know-how and sadly, incredibly uninterested too. Initially, my blog was meant only for pouring out all the trash I had to convey. So I took one of its default themes and simply started writing. Anyone would start like that only. But with time, as you grow, as you see people actually reading your stuff, you want to make their experience truly worth the while. Thus enter new themes, new widgets, new features and what not. The first technical thing learned in this process was to selectively choose one theme from thousands of those available for free on the net and then upload its XML file. Yeah yeah, that's no 'scaling the Everest', but for non-technical people, it still invokes a goody-goody feeling. From there on, one can learn loads. How widgets work, teeny-weeny bits of info about the web, adsense and stuff, HTML-XML tags and all that. It's not like I have learned all of these. But yes, blogging has brought me rather closer. It feels good to not be unaware of such terms, even while you waste hours writing, writing and writing!

As far as the technicalities are concerned, I have learned rather little; as I took interest in little. That's because I am more into the writing part. The very opposite would hold for a tech-blogger. 
Thus, the amount and type of learning is bound to vary from one person to another. But on the whole, blogging is one attractive deal if you really want to learn a lot of stuff. 

Writing skills, grammar, vocab, technical know-how, communication skills, wit, sarcasm and so on. There's too much of it up for grab. Go, blog. Go, learn!