I started blogging in 2004, when blogs still felt like personal corners of the internet.

Ten years later, I had learnt another language.

Keywords. Graphics. Plugins. Mailing lists. Share buttons. Hourly visitors. Heat maps. Optimisation.

The blog was growing.

The writing was shrinking.

At one point, I was writing listicles about the best places for team outings in Bangalore.

I did not live in Bangalore.

I had been there once in my life.

Once.

Then a brand asked me to review a skincare product. Nothing unusual there, except the package was lost in the mail. While a poor PR intern and I tried to trace it, her boss called and said the deadline had changed.

All reviews had to go up by tomorrow.

So I was expected to review a skincare product I had not seen, let alone tested.

I understand corporate pressure.

I understand client pressure.

I do not understand asking someone to manufacture an opinion and call it content.

That was not the only reason I stopped caring about metrics and brand deals.

But it was a useful last straw.

A personal blog can survive many things. Bad drafts, long silences, awkward old posts, even changing internet trends. What it cannot survive for long is forgetting the voice it was built on.

The writing had shrunk so much by then, it took me years to find my way back to my own sentences. I dis claw my way back to it earlier this year, and now have landed on Substack.