What Do You Do When You Don’t Have Ideas To Blog About?

Many like Darren Rowse suggest that you should create a stack of ideas to blog about and then use them in lean periods to tide you over.

Now Darren is an amazing blogger. He regularly talks informatively about a subject which I could probably summarize in 5 minutes flat - about blogging. He does a good job out of it and has many dedicated followers.

I do not have his predisposition. Firstly I am not a professional blogger like him. In other words I do not blog for living even though it makes me a decent income. I blog only when I have something to blog about. I blog when I have some new ideas or technologies or code tips to share. If I don’t have something interesting to share, I don’t. I don’t spend time making an uninteresting topic interesting.

Secondly there are topics which touches me very closely and I want to share but often I decide not to. For example I am very sad at the continuous attack on Hindus in their home country - India. The terrorist attacks on Bangalore (Indian Silicon Valley) as well as on Ahmedabad saddened me to the core. It appears that members of a certain community (no prizes for guessing) is bent upon making Hindus uncomfortable and afraid living in their very own Motherland. And our politicians too are turning a blind eye to the plight of Hindus, except when it is time to beg for votes and then they play silly games to creates division within the community and neutralize the voice of Hindus in moving the country forward. I am sad, I am hurting. However I know that we will survive and even prosper, inspite of all the opposition from so-called “secular” political parties. Having said all that I don’t feel comfortable blogging about these topics. Do you know why?

1. India is not really safe enough for dissenting opinions. Even the slightest dissent can bring upon the forces of government of you (who are tighly controlled by the ruling party), especially if you dare to dissent against a particular community which has an united vote bank political parties can rely upon (and ass-kiss their way to electoral victory).

2. No Indians are safe from direct attacks by members of a particular community and cadres (hired goons) of political parties.

In short you may endanger your life and property by dissenting.

3. I wish I had the clout of bloggers Robert Scoble or Michelle Malkin in sending my voice across to a wider audience but I don’t. It really doesn’t serve anyone to risk my ass and yet not be able to get my point across to a large body of general audience and make a sizeable impact.

So in essence even when I have lots to say about a current event, I often don’t blog about it. I rather choose to blog about some insipid (but techie) tidbits like a review of Yahoo Pipes (an interactive feed aggregator and manipulator). And that makes me even sadder. Do you think the people who died or who lost their relatives in Ahmedabad and Bangalore blasts really care about how good Yahoo Pipes is? Does it matter to them even the slightest bit?