I had planned to write and post this entry two 40 weeks back. That’s the plan I made six 44 weeks ago. But I could not. Not because it’s a difficult topic to write about (may be it is) but because I was busy. When I was not busy I was lazy.
So the news is this: I have gone into hibernation from active journalism. One fine February morning last year, when I changed my Twitter bio, this was the new first sentence: “A journalist in hibernation.”
The editor of Kantipur, where I worked until 18 Feb 2012, was quick to react:
[Please see the disclaimer/clarification on the right and at the end regarding the first tweet above.]
A lot of people- friends and Facebook friends and random acquaintances who know me in various ways- constantly ask me a question: When will your next article come? With more than seven thousand FB friends and five thousand Twitter followers (before I disowned the account and recreated another), number of people with such questions, as one would reasonably expect, was pretty high in the first few weeks and months.
By now, 20 Jan 2013, many people who know me already know the answer of that question: No idea. That’s because I am still in hibernation and don’t know when I will be back. But I will be.
I am still a student of journalism. If everything go as planned, I’ll graduate in less than two months.
I wanted to wait to post this post on 20th of February, announcing my hibernation as I did on my Twitter account, for no reason other than that I went into hibernation on that day of 2012. As I couldn’t do that on 20 Feb, I wanted to do on the 20th day of next month. That too didn’t happen for several months.
I wasn’t always lazy like this when it comes to blogging. I remember posting seven entries in a single day- at least one of them being a ‘breaking blog’ that was updated several times for several hours.
Then there were occasions, I remember one now, when I would post entries describing my thought-process live. Like, streaming of thoughts in words in real-time as they come to mind. I must admit I don’t intend to do the same.
Going by the speed and frequency in which I used to blog in latter half of 2000, this entry definitely comes very late. Very very late indeed.
This reminds me of the fact that I didn’t blog for one whole year- 2012- since I started blogging in 2004. That’s something unimaginable in 2005 or 2006. It was a very lonely blogging journey in the early days. Now the Nepali blogosphere is very much crowded with interesting entries, posts and perspectives.
I hope to rejoin the crowd- after more than a year of hiatus. Though this site hosted Nepal’s first blog back in 2004 (which quickly moved to blog.com.np), I resumed blogging here in 2005 as I needed a forum where I could post apolitical and personal entries. This is how I intend to keep this site today as well. Entries that I post here will be personal, apolitical and filled with my random thoughts on random things I experience while living in Kathmandu and other parts of Nepal. Overall, these entries and this site will be about me as it has always been. Quite frankly, I am the hero of this site. The primary character. The protagonist of the real world that I inhabit, feel and experience. [No, don’t even think of using that N word, which ends with t and has 3s here.]
Disclaimers & clarification:
1. You may have noticed the anomaly in my Twitter accounts above. My original Twitter account @wagle was renamed @jhyal on 2 August 2012. Which means, as the notice on the right column makes it clear, I don’t control or tweet from @jhyal. I don’t own or am responsible for tweets on that account that are posted after 2 Aug 2012. I am @wagle on Twitter. If you want to follow this blog directly so that you don’t have to visit it to see if new post has been uploaded, please enter your email address in the box at the top right.
2. I also announce that I have no editorial association with United We Blog since January 21, 2012 when I posted there for the last time -a full-page article about American Peace Corps that I wrote for Kantipur. The website is now run without my involvement in creation or presentation of its content.
Dinesh Wagle on Nepali Society 