So Richa Singh of my favourite Blogchatter asked us to share a few things on LinkedIn as a part of getting to know us a little better in 2025.
I know Richa and Blogchatter since 2017 as a newbie blogger.I grew as a blogger ,making many blogger friends ,while Blogchatter helped me start earning blogging,writing and more.
My first job:
I tutored my sister’s friends .
A secret super power:I have a Martha Stewart gene.I cook well,bake bread and have a very green thumb!
A year you can’t forget
2000 :I entered Calcutta Medical College as an undergraduate.
An achievement you are super proud of
Becoming a doctor.
An Elevator pitch of introduction to me:
Hi, I am Dr.Amrita Basu.I am an ENT and Head-Neck surgeon with a very green thumb,a colourful imagination and I moonlight as a Creative writer sharing brand stories both through my blog and books.2025 marks a decade of writing online and you can find my work at https://lnkd.in/d8zA2J4G
#Doctor #Healthwealthbridge #Writing #Blogger #Health #Wellness
Blogging journey
Dr.Amrita’s Favorite Creators Who Inspire 2024 Edition! #BlogchatterWrapParty
It’s fun to follow artists and creators.Better yet learn from them .They are our online muse,inspiration, Coach,teacher,mentor and in this age of social media, much of it is free.The best way to give back to these creators is, to buy their books,support their work,listen to their podcast and be their social media warriors.Giving a big shout out to creators who inspire with their creativity,authenticity and persistence.
My favorite creators of 2024 are:
Joanna Penn of the Creative Penn :Author Podcaster and an amazing woman.She is a complete author writing fiction,nonfiction, audiobooks,using AI,doing self publishing,managing her own online store and author entrepreneurship, on a superwoman level.Check out her website or her podcast Creative Penn on your favourite platform.
itzginia my sister and myย baking inspiration. The creative cook in our family whose many delicious sweets ,savouries ,bakes and cakes not only make up family legends, but inspired me to become a full time cook on my spare time.Now my entire family bakes and cooks regularly and after the COVID pandemic we never employed a cook again!
docdivatraveller a beautiful doctor,writer and an exemplary mommy she lights up my instagram feed on days I want to just feel inspired and travel the world.Mandira balances work,life,mommying and creative with grace and humility that’s a rarity in these times.
Monnerisms Floral meets beautiful women .That’s the style Mona Biswarupa paints in.Simple,elegant,graceful,nature inspired and gorgeous women .You will get them all on her feed.Wish she would teach me someday.
duttaanushree I took an Art Course by her and you can see what I painted here.Reach out to her and follow her feed for divine traditions in art form.A wonderful teacher who helps you delve deep into the art form while keeping alive your unique Creativity .
Malini Agarwal is much admired and her book Under the Influence is one of my top picks for 2024 .If you are a creator, yoy must give this book a read.
2025 Resolutions orย Creative Goals Plans?#BlogchatterWrapParty
3 personal goals for 2025?Some of them are truly personal and can’t be shared but for the other’s here goes.
2025 Personal Goal
Stop procrastination.
That’s also known as cud chewing in less polite language.It’s crucial to stay vigilant about this as it’s very easy to wallow luxuriously in the land of day dreams and doing nothing.I am a professional day dreamer while I moonlight as an ENT surgeon.
Exercise more
I love walking ,swimming, running in the sea beach,gardening ,going for nature walk,strength training ,calisthenics and yoga.All of them are fun and absolutely feel good.But the most effortless is gardening. When I garden I forget to worry about how many calories I burn ,it’s more fun and helps me easily get into the flow state.
More protein in my diet .
Since I want real food eggs and fish are my favorite protein source.Nowadays I am focusing on a hero protein for each meal and take it forward after eating my fish/egg/chicken.I love milk,home made chana/cottage cheese and curd.But eggs win hands down for versatility and ease of cooking.I batch cook boiled eggs for eating and nowadays free range eggs from our village are my favorite.
3 Creative Goals for 2025
Write more .I am working on the discipline part for the last 10 years .My number one personal goal is what needs work ,even here.You can read about my
Publish more Audiobooks. I published one(Krishna Misra and the Mysterious Movie Star)and working on a second one.But this takes time.
Paint more and learn more from my favorite creators on Instagram .Like I learned to Paint Calm and paint the God’s of Mithila .
The best part of the trying to do more with less
Learning how to find the fun and creative in the daily grind is my forever goal .My husband is the inspiration behind that.
10 Unexpected Lessons from10 Years of Blogging on Healthwealthbridge
I started Healwealthbridge 10 years ago.It was supposed to be a way to help people take back control over their health.Because health is your true wealth.But as it turned out my readers and my blogger friend helped me learn to live better.Blogging helps you learn.
Human beings seek community. They want to be around those they can trust.They know health is important.But.It’s a big but they still buy that packet of chips .Why don’t restaurants mention the amount of salt,sugar and oil in the food .Some restaurants mention the hero ingredients but not these.Plus there’s no way to find out about the type of oil used.Shouldn’t we be avoiding those highly processed seed oils and palm oil too?But most eateries don’t share ingredients, let alone their quantity.But as a doctor blogging I could share all that I know without it being unsustainable. I wanted my blog to be sustainable. Passive income is a thing I am still exploring but my blog is definitely my side income ,a part of my life but not the centre of it.The people in my life…they are at the centre of my life mandala.
I didn’t want to make things difficult for me by making itdifficult to maintain.That’s why I thought of writing on topics which came naturally to me while giving random gyan.That includes health ,wellness,making money and education.There were too many highly professional websites being maintained by hospitals,healthcare companies where the content is written by SME s and may or may not be reviewed by a Doctor.I wanted this to be about health care from the Indian middle class perspective .It needs to be affordable ,good quality,maintains dignity and humane.Tough things in the real world.But on the website I could do all that,without breaking the bank.Blogging is about giving back to the Community in a sustainable way.
But I couldn’t start typing in mother tongue ,though I wanted to.
I wasn’t sure about the audience reading blog or not.I knew nothing about blogs,blogging,wordpress,SEO,social media and was totally a novice about tech stuff online,But that didn’t stop me from starting blogging because it was the best way to get out of my mind.I was a new mom,with a new job in a new place and I was afraid I was not going to make it .I was clueless about being a mother ,the job meant stability but sleepless nights and other worries.The new place had its perks,It was close to my husband’s childhood home.The hospital where I worked was just a five minutes walk .In between the great adventure of being a mother exploring a new place and trying to build a career I felt out of sorts.I was looking for stability and the job didn’t feel like an ever-after thing .But wasn’t that what I always wanted?Or was it?
That’s why when I started reading Amy Lynn Andrews blog,Smart passive income by Pat Flynn and the inspired room.net by Melissa Michael’s I thought I knew the answer.I wanted a digital home.My virtual home in the clouds.It sounded funny and it always made me smile.I didn’t want to be only on momspresso and Womenโs โs Web.We know how they ended.It was sad .
It was also a wonderful way to make others smile when I told them about my blog.Blogging is a personal journey I am going through in public .
Blogging keeps me flexible.I am forever fumbling to learn some new tech or recollect about an old one and trying to organize the back end without going down a rabbit hole.Its a constant journey of dusting the cobwebs of my mind and reapplying the paint on my nails before I start typing.
Blogging helps me remember that showing up and taking a small step today puts you ahead of everyone ten years later.Showing up matters.
I finished a course on Digital Journalism by Reuters and if not for my interest in blogging, I would never have done it.Exploring the unknown is what life is about.You don’t know what’s going to happen next year,next month,tomorrow or even the very next second.If you are forever afraid of this that and everything in between, you will never be able to do anything meaningful.Walking the path which is calling to you is often a struggle.But looking back you will realize your struggle and your wins ,both made you who you are today.The bigger the challenge ,the stronger you become.Challeges and set backs are opportunities in disguise.
Knowing this is not enough.Keep reminding yourself of this .Over and over again.When you feel you want a soft life ,do something hard.Challenge yourself to learn a new skill ,mow the lawn,grow vegetables ,start a service business,write a book,Write a Poetry (which rhymes),learn a new language,declutter your wardrobe,repurpose the old dupatta…I could go on.This ability to stay curious is what makes healthwealthbridge.com work for me and it’s the reason I decided to do a soft launch of Healthwealthbridge online school some time back.It’s going to be a digital library and I have plans.
Happy tenth birthday Healthwealthbridge .You saw me through a decade .You helped me survive the pandemic lockdown and beyond.You helped me put down roots ,even if it’s online and you are the reason I was confident enough to write books and teach my daughter to write one too.
Thank you dear blog.Lets do some more good work.You taught me the value of persisting .
Goodbye Womenโs Web and Why you Must have your own site
Womens Web said good bye on 2nd July and stopped publishing activities “saying the platform will be available until August 30th”.
I checked whether the site was still available and it can still be seen online.They stopped after 14 years of work and said they will be exploring other avenues.With more than 20,000 posts and being a multi author website ,it had a militant Feminist tone to the post which made me uncomfortable. It didn’t have balanced view points and many articles lacked depth.That happens when its a training ground for bloggers and is unavoidable.That’s my opinion .
But how it affected quality is what made me discontinue the internship with them.
The two articles I wrote for Womenโs Web-
Yes they also offered internship(unpaid) opportunities where the coordinator was often clue less and checked back and forth for decision making.
Aparna Vedapuri Sing was the founder of Women’s Web and her vision of empowering women through an online platform, work and recognition sounded just right.But if few seemed to make money from writing on these online platforms
But interesting point they have written a post about how to earn money blogging.Then their website went kapu!
Money is crucialf or sustainable work or even charity. Someone pays for it.My aim with blogging in first twoย year was continuous writing. Then came my focus on earning from the blog to sustain the hosting,domain and my time .
Those who want to try writing and not sure whether they can sustain the habit,try wordpress free sites.Try them for a period of 3 months. Sign up to a platform like Blogchatter.
Write on their prompts or the WordPress prompts while building up your writing muscle and habit.It takes time ,patience,interest ,driving force and God’s blessings for the journey to happen and make sense.But if it’s your site you have nothing to lose but everything to gain while building up a legacy .
Digital legacy -that’s a blog.
If it’s a free site there are some good things and some problems,which I have written about here.
But the biggest con for free sites and publishing on others site is just what Womenโs Web and Momspresso proved.They will mint money while you write for the love of writing or peanuts or bargain posts .When the site goes caput ,you lose all the way.
But if you had your own site ,you can still republish those posts ,if relevant on your site.If you don’t have a blog ,you can start one any day.Just plan,chalk out a budget and start.Just don’t fall for the “I am sitting at home in pyajamas and earning 7 figures blogging drama.”
That’s not a one day,one month or one year plan.It takes time especially if you are ethical and don’t want to work with “Gutkha”,gaming, Casino and other harmful brands.
It’s a long haul,a message to the world ,that you were here and you stood your ground for the right things.
<a href=”http://www.womensweb.in/2017/12/winners-finalists-orange-flower-digital-summit-awards-2017/”><img src=”http://www.womensweb.in/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/OF-finalist-badge.png”></a>
Why do you Blog?
Why do you blog?
Blogging is what’s happening inside my mind(almost) expressed online on my blog through the written words.
Human Body for Kids-A Look Inside You by Dr.Amrita Basuย is my latest book .It’s a book to help kids 5 to 15 years have a quick understanding about what’s inside your body.Its Free for a limited time.
It happens to be a wonderful way of–
Self Therapy
Checking out minimum viable topics for later elaborating as books.
Finding my flow
Meditation
Self discovery
Clearing the mind
Sharing my experience
Taking a stand
Sharing my professional knowledge
Because as you know
“The pen is mighter than the sword “-Edward Bulwer-Lytton
With the social media “influenzing” bubble running low on steam in more ways than one,my blog is the one constant place where I like writing.
It’s my online digital library for my daughter ,for all the things I want to tell her/teach her/show her .I might forget,not find the right words or run out of time in the physical world.But on the internet archives my digital content will live (I hope).
I am writing this with the #BlogchatterHalfMarathan