Episode 321 : Comment? Like? Share?

val·i·date [val-i-deyt]
verb (used with object), -dat·ed, -dat·ing.
1. to make valid; substantiate; confirm.
2. to give legal force to; legalize.
3. to give official sanction, confirmation, or approval to, as elected officials, election procedures, documents, etc.

I never figured out when things changed from wanting to be known by others to wanting to be acknowledged by others, to be told that I am good at what I do. There were times, and sometimes even now, when I have compared the kind of "feedback" I used to get in the comments section back at the old blog to the kind I get here. Or look up feed aggregators to see who are following me, or how many episodes have gotten shared with their friends. There were a few emails that were sent by first-time readers, telling me that they liked what I write. But it was never enough and it was never reassuring. I often wondered if I should have "sold out" and told the people from back then about the blog I occasionally update now...

Then there were my photographs. Every new album received a lot of comments or emails telling me how much they envied the freedom I had to be able to go to so many places, and how they enjoyed reading the captions I had given to all the photos. They used to make my day.

Then some thing happened. Maybe it was work, or maybe it was just laziness. I stopped travelling as often. I took lesser photos, but they all began to look the same. They had nothing new in them, and every attempt at trying something new only fuelled the cycle. My writing was another casualty- I didn't know what to write, or often I forgot how to transfer the words in my head into a meaningful blog post. When a blog post was somehow, somewhere shared by someone, I wondered why but never dared to ask. Why lose what little comes your way, eh?

FaceBook did not help too. Status updates of people in my friends list often got noticed, so did their photos even if they weren't interesting. I could also update about the restaurants I ate at (which weren't many), the things I bought (which weren't many), the places I went to (which weren't often) or the photos I took (which again were taken once in a while). I wondered if I just stopped doing things in ways interesting to others.

'Why do you want to pimp yourself on FaceBook?' a friend once asked. I never found the right words to justify myself- it sounded hollow even to me!

On a lark, instead of uploading my Leh photos onto Picasa, I chose FaceBook. The feedback poured in. Emails from friends appreciated the photos. People told me in person that they loved the photos. I began to feel validated- my photos aren't so bad after all. But it is Leh so it is bound to be interesting, I thought. I wondered if my trip to Ooty would bring about similar results.

I took more photos at Ooty last weekend. I uploaded them too. The feedback continued. From friends, from friends of friends.

Maybe my photos aren't that bad, I thought, considering that some of the feedback came from people whose photos I appreciate.

My question now is, will I be able to stop this?