SO LONG, YAHOO! MAIL UPDATES!

In a week's time, Yahoo! Mail Updates users -- including yours truly -- will be saying goodbye to the feature. Yahoo! Mail, however, did not provide an explanation as to why they wanted the Updates tab out. I surmise it's probably because posting status messages on Yahoo! Mail is not as popular as it is on "well-loved" Facebook, and the "share-it-on-Facebook-and-Twitter" option is likewise not well-received. It is also likely that Yahoo! Mail does not want to "compete" with Facebook in that aspect, given that a "tie-up" -- in the form of the 'Quick Reply' service, by which Facebook messages and notifications can be easily replied to -- between them exists. Or maybe, having a status message on Yahoo! Mail is deemed just the same as having one on Yahoo! Messenger and they don't like to be "redundant." Eh?! Well, these are just my two cents' worth. What I'm certain of is that it's going to be pretty odd not to see the Updates button on my Mail page anymore.

BOYS, GIRLS, AND THE APPLE TREE

(Image from here)

BLOGGING AND ME

I've been taken to reading numerous blogs lately, ranging from those about passion for art, love to travel, life in a foreign land, one's quest for his personal holy grail, no-nonsense political and social affairs in the country, living life to the fullest and whatnot. And while they, most of the time, provide for some sense of inspiration, they also do not fail in leading me to benchmark my own blog against them.

Don't get me wrong. Yes it may seem negative, but I believe otherwise. It allows me to come up with more sensible things to write about, let alone to blog more often, thinking that if I do so, my blog would be able to fare well on the cyberspace as these blogs I'm bowled over with do. But, is it really important that my blog should be at par with the ones bandied about on blogrolls, earning many comments on their entries? Interestingly enough, my brain answers me: So what if it's not?

For more than a year that I've been pouring my heart out on this blog, I can proudly say that this has to be a feather in my cap. Though bent on keeping my grammar in shipshape, groping for (hifalutin) words I deliberately take note of and trying to the best of my abilities to sound like a pro blogger, in the end it all boils down to these important things: that in the process I'm doing something imperative to my learning, that I'm doing something productive, that I'm doing something to somehow compensate for my lack of professional practice as a writer and not make my writing skills atrophy. Add to these the fulfillment of my goal to create "an outlet, though digital, of my blabs and raves, of what I feel and think about things, of those I never had the chance to express."

Realizing these makes me appreciate all the more what I can do because I DO THEM. I don't really need to think of who writes better than whom, who has richer vocabulary than whom and who attracts more traffic than whom. This is my output. This is my blog. This is my wide white wall. And I wouldn't have it any other way.