The first thing I ever wrote with some regularity and intent was a cricket blog I started during my undergrad years. This must have been 2008 or 2009. I called it A View from the Pavilion, and it wasn’t bad. I know this because I sent a piece to the former England correspondent of Cricinfo, George Dobell, and he was quite happy with it. It was probably the first time someone told me I was a good writer.
For some reason, I grew tired of it, stopped writing, and deleted it. Not the writing though, just that blog. I started writing on another blog - it’s still up - a few months into business school. I would usually be able to write one post a month, at times two. It was angsty, romantic, sentimental stuff, and I cringe when I read it now. But some of it is still surprisingly readable, even good. My professors encouraged me, and gratified by the attention, I kept at it.
That blog got me the most important break of my life. When I applied for a marketing role at a small startup called Freshdesk, the founder, Girish Mathrubootham, read it and decided to hire me.
Through those years and after, I kept writing. I wrote everywhere. I tried Wordpress, Tumblr, Medium, but was never happy.
I like classification, order, and neatness. None of these spaces gave me that. I was too lazy and technically inept to make something for myself, but I kept writing. I published a piece in the Hindu, a few pieces for Scroll, and worked on a book. This was all during a gap year when I was back home in Pondicherry.
Returning to work after, writing took a backseat and life took over. But soon the restlessness came back, and I craved a creative outlet of some sort. And now I had a few things to say about work. The CMO Journal was the result. A newsletter on marketing, I have been writing it for 2 years now. It's easily the most satisfying writing I've done, and it’s added so much value to so many people.
Around the same time, I also started writing another newsletter called East Coast Road, for other things I'm interested in. I have quite a few pieces up there now.
But late last year, as I was thinking about starting on another long term writing project, I realised I had to tighten it all up a bit. My writing was thematically scattered, and it couldn't be found and read in one place even if people wanted to.
I realised that East Coast Road was not a newsletter at all. It was a blog, an old-fashioned personal blog. But again, I had the problem I had since the time I began writing: There were too many places to write. I needed a simple personal blog, I didn’t want to sit and code it up, and I didn’t want it to be fancy.
That’s when I found Posthaven, where you are reading this. It’s a blogging platform whose promise is that it will stay online forever. I love its simple clarity, and I love that I can just spend my time writing, not worrying about how things look, what I can fiddle with, and so on. This is exactly what I wanted.
So, over the next few months, I will be migrating every single thing I’ve ever written to this place, this blog of my own. I will also be deleting my other blogs when all that is done. East Coast Road will go down, so will my old college blog.
Simple, then: The marketing writing will go to my newsletter, The CMO Journal. Everything else will be here.
Why do this now?
A huge part of this is just me indulging my order-obsessed brain. I'm absolutely certain no one else cares. But the other is that once this is over, I will have the clarity to launch a couple of projects that have been in my head for while. And having one place where all of my work can rest, and be read, is something I’ve always wanted.
What does this mean for you, the few of you who think my writing is worth reading?
It makes it simpler for you to follow my writing. All you have to do is click the Follow this Posthaven link underneath this post, and the posts will land in your mailbox, much like Substack. And finally, I will be revisiting, editing, and publishing again my older work. I get to go back down memory lane, refresh a few things.
There will be a lot to read. And I hope you do.