My last post was in January. It’s December now.

What was I thinking when I started this blog?

I’ve been away from this blog for so long that I actually considered starting afresh with a ‘Hello World’ post.

BUT – it’s still 2009 so it’s probably that not that bad. Still time to make amends. Lets see if I can write a post at least every other day for the remaining days of the month.

I want to be a writer but I shy away from even posting a few words on a blog. Sometimes I wonder why I always avoid having to write.

One obvious answer is that perhaps I don’t want it bad enough. But it’s not just one reason, there’s another one.

I want every word to perfectly communicate what I want to communicate.

“Does this sentence make sense? Is the spelling right? Is the grammar a bit off? Could I use a better word there? Does this sound interesting? Is it flowing well? Should I just select all and delete and start all over again?”

And it’s never perfect. So I don’t write at all.

I’m going to change that. To hell with perfection – if the idea of perfection is going to keep me from writing.

I’m just going to write – a lot. First drafts are never need not be perfect. And this is a blog – not a novel.

Moving on to other stuff…

We (my wife and I) have closed the digitization business that we’d begun in 2003. Don’t know if we’d ever start it again. We’re thinking of using all that we learned in order to build another business but that’s still in the planning and researching phase.

I’m busy working on building a sustainable online business and am even doing a 6-month long intensive course.

Plus there are a few other things that I’m pursuing – I’ll talk about those in a different post.

After a wonderful 13-day trip to Switzerland, we are back in India. We visited Zurich, Lausanne, Lucerne, Interlaken, Chur and Grindelwald. All the cities had their own flavor and its hard to choose a favorite but if I had to pick a place, it would be Grindelwald because that’s probably the most beautiful place I’ve ever visited. It’s the sort of place I could stay forever and never tire of the beauty.

There are so many things I would love to share about the place but writing them all down would make this a humongous post. That’ll probably be a great topic for a podcast [Yes, I'm planning to start putting up podcasts along with regular posts]

The trip was part-work and part-vacation but now it’s back to full time work. And that means hard work. Those 13 days helped me unwind and allowed me to think about where and how my life is headed. Now it’s time to implement all those things.

I’ve been gone a very long time from my blog. It’s not that I’ve been too busy to post – it’s just that I didn’t feel a strong enough urge to write and so didn’t.

Now, though, I’ve decided that urge or not – I’m going to write on this blog on a regular basis. There’ll be personal stuff, there’ll be professional stuff, there’ll be random musings.

So how often should you visit this blog? I’d say once or twice a week should suffice, if you’re a friend interested in knowing what I’ve been up to.

You could check on a daily basis if you’re a die hard fan but I doubt there’ll be daily posts.

On a side note, I’ve changed the look of my site. The theme comes from a designer I quite like, Jai Verma. You can download this theme or others from his site at BlogohBlog.

The song will be a bit delayed. The friend I’m working with had to change jobs and his current job in a call center leaves him very little time for even his family so we haven’t been able to meet for a long time now.

But his job situation should stabilize soon. He’s looking for a job as a music teacher in a good school so I hope that will work out soon.

If anyone reading this knows someone who might know of such a job opening (music teacher), please contact me through the comments section. He doesn’t have a music degree but is an amazing musician. He can sing, play the piano, guitar, drums, keyboard and maybe some other instruments that I’m not aware of.

It’s not the first song I’ve composed. I’ve composed over a dozen of them but today I sat down with a good friend on my first completed song – complete lyrics written and melody composed – and went about working out the musical arrangement with him.

His name is Anurag Smith and he’s a very talented musician. (He’s also the Pastor of the Christian Fellowship, a New Delhi-based church). he’s really good with playing a lot of instruments and can also mix well. This was the first time we ever sat down to work on any song of mine.

It’s taken me a decade to finally get serious with my music, and now that I have, it really feels good. All I had to do was take that first step, to have the courage to move towards success. And it already seems much easier now.

Will tell you more about that song soon. I’m hoping to release it by the middle of Feb 2008.

In October last year, I had tried to write a complete novel in 15 days straight. But I got sidetracked by other work pressures and just abandoned the challenge.

Success comes not by never failing but by picking oneself up from the ground, time after time after time. And not giving up.

I, too, haven’t given up. So starting this Sunday, 27th of January, I will once again embark on writing a whole novel in 15 days flat.

Anyone interested in following my progress can go to http://15daybook.wordpress.com  and check out how I tackle the challenge. Comments are always very welcome.