My Journey

Creating on a schedule feels whacky sometimes. Like you're trying to get things flowing, but you're just going through the motions. It feels mechanical, forced, and inorganic. Compare it to those rare glimpses of inspiration where polished, premeditated, and well-thought-out ideas seem to put themselves together effortlessly. That stuff happens once in a few months, though. When you go for a long time without expressing yourself, you know exactly what you want to say. You have time to articulate it and understand the most interesting parts of the idea. Sometimes it feels like all you really need is a good idea, other times, it feels like all anyone has is a bunch of ideas with nothing to show for it. I often thought to myself that becoming a writer, a storyteller, or an artist would be something I have an inherent talent for. I imagined that I would be exceptionally good at it and that my personality fits that kind of work. Life could be so good if I did that, it'll make me...

I feel paralyzed of late. Sure this is the way to go, but also certain that it's all wrong. I don't know what to do. I feel like doing things but also feel like doing the exact opposite. I try to do things regardless of my feelings, but it just never works out. I'm not strong enough to do what I want and I want to fall into despair. I want to let myself feel hopeless and fatalist, but I can't even do that anymore. I'm starting to feel like I can't do anything at all.  I think about what I want to write, and the things I want to convey, but nothing seems to come together. I sit here in front of the screen, trying to put it all together. Why can't I just enjoy the mess as it is? Why do I need to figure things out and do them proper? Isn't this supposed to be a game? I was always the loon, never the topper. Always trying so hard to be something or the other. Always trying to do something. Never really making it, or even just being at peace. I wish I could j...

I live in a primarily collectivist society where the group tends to take priority over the individual. I say primarily because India is a large & diverse country, with a complex interplay of various ecosystems, some vastly different from others. Mine is a particularly backward city where this sense of collectivism runs deep and manifests itself in palpable ways.  One particularly repulsive quality is that of groupism. On a basic level, people always go in groups whenever possible. They find people around them to whom they can latch on, thereby increasing their own social capital, the essential currency for this city's people. Money is still largely important, but relationships are valued even more greatly. For Jaipur's people, it's more about who you know than what you have or what you can do. People cling tightly to their parents and extended family, putting up smiling faces to even the most hated members to gain benefits. To alienate and ostracize is the greatest puni...

The indomitable human spirit. Ever heard of it before? It's what keeps a chubby kid from reaching for another chicken nugget. It's the glitter in the eyes of the gambling addict that keeps hitting the slot machine for just one more try. Look at em go, he's in it to win it fr fr. How inspirational. Even when he lost his home and started drinking moonshine from a junkyard radiator to pass the time in between shifts. Such unwavering conviction! But why do they say human spirit? This is hardly something unique to the hunter-gatherer monkey variety of sentient pounds of flesh.  Just look at the noble birds, for example. Chirping away those mating calls like anyone's business, just hell-bent on getting lucky. What dedication to its craft! Life has always been tenacious like that. From the moment the first living cells emerged from the hot volcanic ducts of the blue ocean, or perhaps even what came before it. From the noble gases like helium to the planet's formation, thin...

If I look at this blog a few months back, I had saved about a dozen different articles with nothing but the title on the page. Putting them aside as drafts, I figured the ideas were worth expanding, plus I would have something to say for days when I couldn't come up with anything. Today is one of those days, and I can't help but feel a bewildering sense of regret as to why I deleted those posts. Some stupid reasons like decreasing my stress or reducing the barrier to entry for starting to post again. It's not that I always have something to say, or that it's even important for me to say anything. It's that if I show up to speak regularly, I'll eventually get better at it enough to be of service. That's what this practice is all about for me. It's self-serving as far as I get to explore my curiosities and wonder. Yet it's my dream to be of use to others. The question is why should anyone care? It's not a question directed at me or anyone in partic...

I sit on top of the world's peak, at the ends of the physical realm, about as far as I could possibly go while I'm still tangled with it. I begin to meditate upon the burning question that weighs me down so heavily. Today, I come here in hopes of unraveling that within myself, which I despise the most in others. Why is it that we're so lost on this Earth? Are the physical noises so loud that nothing of substance can possibly remain within sight? We're all so obsessed with numbers. Slaving away, day by day, just to make those digits climb on that screen. So possessed by the body's needs that we end up running on a hamster wheel, going in circles. Always chasing after that, thing. All these fucking things. That blip in the circuit, a wave of electricity, a cocktail of neurotransmitters, chemicals in a meat bag, creating a kaleidoscope of sensations. By and large, whenever I sit down to investigate anything, the only thing I end up concluding is that everything is perf...

Once I started to approach the mark of around 100 articles here, I started to tell myself, I gotta start mixing it up now. Never mind how difficult it was to write that much, or the reason why I was able to do it in the first place. I figured that I'd never get anywhere by writing spur-of-the-moment gibberish with little to no thought behind it. Stream of consciousness is just another word for lazy, I figured. There has to be something more meaningful I could do than just writing about writing, saying so little in so many words. Indeed, the entire process of writing involves so much more than just projectile vomiting your thoughts and ideas onto a page and calling it a done deal. It involves planning, research, rereading, various layers of editing, polishing, marketing, and publishing.  Yet I'd be lying if I said that it doesn't get me anywhere at all. If nothing else, I can master the art of showing up. The thing is, getting started is always the hardest step. Going from i...

Why do I even bother sometimes? How many times will I try to do something that obviously doesn't work? Why beat my head against a wall? Isn't it better to just give in? I mean, I feel like shit all the time nowadays. Not literally all the time, of course. I end up forgetting about it again and again, and there's always something to keep me distracted. Always something to do, something urgent that needs tending to and demands my attention. I decided this year to write every single day. I figured that I might forgo my fitness goals, miss out on all the learning opportunities, break my harmonica practicing streak constantly, and still be completely fine as long as I keep writing. I figured that as long as I polished one skill for the whole year, it'd all be worth it. Safe to say that I've failed miserably. I fucked up every single thing on my list, and then some. I backtracked, hit rock bottom, and carved out a newer low. I disappointed myself so many times, that I don...