A Personal Touch

Over the last few weeks, several people have sent me emails, asking me how am I doing, sending me links to jobs that might be a potential fit, listing institutions I could look into, or simply wishing me luck. And I have read all these emails and messages multiple times, smiling, and basking in the feeling of wonder. Many of you wrote that you have been reading me for years now, and never commented, until now. Some of you appreciated that in this age of twitter and Facebook, I still wrote long blogs. It was like suddenly discovering a mini treasure chest of friends who I did not know existed.

Thank you for every note and every comment you wrote for me. I am not very good at replying right away, but that is not an excuse. What amazes me is, even after sharing so little personal information, you have been interested to continue reading. I don’t think I would be very keen on reading someone whose name I did not know, but I might be wrong. I consciously try not to mention identifiers, names of people and universities and where I live and where I work and what color car I drive. Because when I started blogging back in 2005 (almost 9 years and going strong), I wanted to be this totally anonymous person on the web people did not know about. That way, I could write more freely without hesitation. I see many people on Facebook promoting their blogs (which is fine I guess if you do not want to be anonymous), and then going a step ahead and soliciting certain people from their friend’s list to read and comment. It makes me cringe, though it should not. To me, it is a self-selecting group of readers. Nothing wrong in that. It just makes me feel weird that people personally known to me are reading everything I write. It would be fine if I wrote movie reviews and restaurant reviews and fictional stories. Not otherwise.

However, those emails I received were lovely. And I want to genuinely know who you all are. Not because I am going through a crisis and looking for a job and could do with some much needed support. I just want to know who you all are. To me, it feels like I have been performing on stage all this while, the spotlights on me, while my readers sit in darkness watching the show.

Please send me an email at sunshinenjoy[at]gmail[dot]com if you’d like to say hi. I look forward to hearing from you.

sunshine