Enthusiasm levels of a blog

Enthusiasm levels of a blog:

Day 1: The fact that you decide to start a blog stems from the fact that you've decided your first blog post. Probably first 2-3, some interesting event, some story or just your funda of life. You write it with full energy, and share it with all your (close and not-close) friends

Day 2: Whoa! you are excited about those 2 comments, and those chat messages congratulating to start your blog. Super excited, you write one more blog entry, whose first lines are how you really are interested in blogs. Again, you share it with everyone.

Day 3: The feeling of "I never knew I had so much talent in me". Blog entry # 3. In most cases, the quality of this one will be a shade lesser than #1 and #2. People will be "Yeh kucch zyada hi ucchal raha hai". Number of comments drop.

Day 4,5,6,7: You bask in the glory by not writing any more blogs. Secret reason is that you don't have much to write, since all your enthusiasm was spent on the first 3 entries

Day 17: You read one great news on rediff/cnn/ndtv ( or any stupid news site - included onion ) and you blog about it . Whether people respond or not, you carry a sense of great 'comeback' pride

Month 2-12: This phase defines how good a blogger you would become. Most bloggers don't reach this stage. A little more enthusiastic bloggers blog once or twice ( or more if you are a phd student, even more if you are an engineer without much work)

Year 2: A majority of bloggers, good or bad, are filtered out by this point. Most feel that blogging was not what they thought it to be. Either they did not like blogging or blogging did not like them. Many of them still bask in the glory of their first (and only) blogs . A few lazy bloggers (like me ) blog once a month. Good bloggers still blog regularly.

Year 3: If you have come upto here, you are a , no not great blogger. You are quite a perseverant and persistent fellow. If you get comments on your blog - you are a good blogger. If you get comments on your blog without forcing your friends to do it- you are a great blogger.

Year 4-5 : If you still blog once a month, you are a hard-working blogger. If you blog more than this- there are only 2 outcomes. You have attained Great heights in blogging or people are like "Khudko Arundhati Roy ka bhai samajhta hai " :P

Year 6: Start writing a book 

A great idea!

A few days back, I got a call from a friend. Her father was undergoing a heart surgery and needed AB+ blood in Bombay. She asked me if I knew someone. My answer ,"Sure, I'll get you someone in about an hour". As promised, within an hour,my father had called a gentleman with AB+ blood and he agreed to be present wherever required the next morning.

Many years back, my father did something on a small scale, which I feel is of great significance. We had a small health camp in our society (it was primarily for cancer , but served some other purposes ). Here's what he did:

1. Get 2-3 local doctors/nurses to check and make blood group cards for all the people who came. A simple test, and you get a card which carries your emergency contact info and your blood group, so that God Forbid, if you are in an accident, and some good Samaritan tries to help you, he has all the info he needs from that card.

What you had to give in return was to register your name/phone number and blood group in a small diary that my father has maintained till date. it contains the names of all people and their phone numbers with blood groups. If someone ever calls us in the middle of the night asking for blood, we can ask the concerned person if they would be interested in volunteering and then connect the two parties together.

While I loved this idea and thought this was important enough, when someone actually thanked me more than profusely for getting info about a donor, I was overwhelmed. And that's why this comes as a blog-post because I think it's an idea that can and should be implemented in co-operative housing societies across India.

2. The Indian Cancer Society used to assist in organizing Cancer Detection Camps. Their funda was simple. They would charge Rs. 65 ( am sure it's more than that today) for basic testing of a person for cancer . All they needed was that there should be 100 people attending and that logistics (like tables, electricity , lunch/snacks for staff) would be provided, and they would come and conduct the check. It would either clear you of everything or , if they suspected something, they would recommend a further check.

What I found particularly interesting was, that for a person in India , if I ask them to do a checking on a weekday for cancer, they would think about costs/excuses. But then, on a Sunday morning, a low-cost test would be kind of welcome. Especially when you know that it's done by not-for-profit [I am not sure if the ICS is not-for-profit or not ] .

One more significant advantage was that since it was mostly done on a non-charitable basis, you did not have to go through the processes of fundraising. Anyone could think about it and do it done in one days of effort. As far as volunteers were concerned , kids can always be roped in to do simple things like crowd control and money collection .

The camp was particularly successful as it helped a few people go for further checking and treatment in early stage of cancer.

A small idea- but quite visionary. Kudos to you, Pappa :) .