Aditi's Monologue

Here we go again, please prepare yourself (we all know it’s mostly just me who requires preparedness to write here, but let’s have faith, alright?). After my last post, which was approximately 47000 years back, I am feeling fresh enthusiasm to write again on my blog. And to likely take it ahead with the likes of Medium and Substack. And Social Media, obviously. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves here. Baby steps.

If you’ve been a long-time, old reader of this blog, you might remember my When-I-Am-Not-Around series, yes? No? Well, it was an unintentional blog series where I would – after disappearing for months or more, explain myself and the lack of new posts. Here is the first one that I wrote, thinking of it as a one-off theme (lol), and years later, as I hit the publish button on part 5, I was still telling myself that this is not a regular theme. I mean, what can I say? I am nothing if not hopeful and upbeat, even when all evidence and past experience says otherwise. Sigh.

So, let’s say this is When-I-Am-Not-Around-Part-6, and let’s remember that no matter how long I disappear for, I always come back to writing on this blog. In real life, I am actually always writing. Powerful and formal emails, the occasional rude emails (because, why not?), funny emails to colleagues and clients whom I like (bonding at work looks like this), random ideas on my Notes app (eg: next books idea number 18), a few different poems at any given point in time in my drafts, random ideas in pretty notebooks (this is not an organized process, there are multiple notebooks), Advertising campaign ideas in my work diary (no, not the next viral idea but there is a Cannes Lion pinned to me board in office because – manifestation), my long-term goals and crisp to-do lists. But discipline to write consistently is an issue, mainly because it is not just writing (which I enjoy), is it? For every post here, I also hold myself to some sort of unattainable (for me, not for general tech-savvy folks) standards of blog post headers, blog body images, SEO techniques, and the overall sustainability of what I write.

Then there is the issue of WHAT to write about? Don’t get me wrong, this particular space is where I come and write about anything and everything under the sun, disregarding all advice of maintaining a niche blah blah. On this blog, I write on topics I feel passionately about, or at the very least, topics that I can make fun of. I have written here on Travel, Parenting, Pop Culture, and then there’s this entire block on this very blog, where I’ve written about personal stuff: Life updates, friendships, heartbreaks, failures, successes, tiny wins, and hilarious encounters. But recently, I’ve been debating if this is the right approach or should I stick to one or two main topics/themes to maintain a niche or attach a category relevance to my blog.

I do share things and posts on social media (mainly Instagram)- but it’s adhering to no theme, obviously. It’s whatever comes my way, whatever I have time for, it’s diluted, it’s messy and chaotic, it’s fun and random, it’s organic, and well, it feels like life. I never overshare, obviously. I don’t even share anything too personal on my social media, for that matter. You’ll know where I went, 3 out of 10 times only, and easily 3 days AFTER I’ve been there. I don’t share too many personal updates unless they are about my books or some work-related panel or events.

Can I do the same here? Obviously not. I want to dig deeper here on this blog. I want you to stay with me a bit longer here, linger with me more than a scroll on Instagram. I want to write freely here – about everything that I want to. And it’s too much that I want, isn’t it? Time is currency. I want to be smart about it. Themes and topics-wise, I have been thinking whether I should limit it to just work-related topics. Or maybe only parenting? But the honest answer has always been against all these restrictions.

The honest answer is that I want this to be a place where I write about everything, because that is how this blog came about in 2005 (or was it 2004?). I created a blog on Blogspot (owned by Google at the time) so that I could write freely. And in 2025, I want to continue that. Will it work for you? I hope it does.

For years, my blog has been a mix of travel diaries, parenting notes, advertising rants, and the occasional pop culture hot take. Then, life got busy: work in digital advertising took over, my daughter grew into the glorious stage of her teenage years (she’s currently 13), and I am about to quietly complete a major academic course in therapy and psychology [More on this later]. Writing went from “always” to “sometimes.”

But as I mentioned earlier, you know I’ve always come back to words. To this space I created almost two decades back.

This time, I’m making it official. I’m writing again, regularly, with intention, and across the things that matter most to me. I’m dividing them into the following blocks. You and I both know I will rarely stick to these, but it’s good to have some structure, and here it is:

• Parenting a teenager in India (a comedy-drama in itself).
• Digital advertising, AI, and women in leadership.
• Pop culture, cricket, Bollywood, and internet trends. (I want to write on Cricket, but I am simply done)
• Therapy, psychology, and the small lessons that make life lighter.

This blog will remain my home base, a library of long-form posts and stories. Alongside, I’m also hoping to maintain a regular-ish newsletter on Substack (sign up if you haven’t already!), and to hopefully publish selected essays on Medium because I have a profile there and might as well use it for reach.

After wondering if I should pick up a niche, I’d like to believe that my voice doesn’t need to be “just one thing.” It needs to be honest, curious, sometimes funny, sometimes reflective, much like life itself.

So, here’s to a fresh season of writing. Come back again for an actual post – maybe I’ll restart my blogging journey with a fun post on my current state of parenting a newly minted teen in 2025. Thank you for being here. Over and out for now.