Back to Basics
Life has been intruding into my writing time. I’ve been noticing the slow demise of my carefully constructed discipline, time chipped away at a slow and steady pace.
I write every day.
I can still say that in present tense because it isn’t false. But the quantity of my writing has reduced. (I’m not going to talk about quality — that’s another rabbit hole for another time.)
In the initial days, I filled notebook after notebook, but lately, the only notebook I seem to be filling is my journal (which is full of pages of me cribbing how I don’t have enough time to write).
It’s not even that I don’t want to write. The well of ideas is still intact, and it’s still breeding thoughts and experiments. I want to follow the lines of thought, experiment with them, translate them into a sentence and see where it takes me. But somewhere down the line, I seem to have lost something vital. That drive, that excitemnet.
I still write everyday.
I brew my cup of tea every morning and sit to write. I sip my tea. I think. But I don’t get lost within words and worlds. The magic is lost.
If I’m writing on a computer, I’ll check up on all the other tasks I have on the internet, and local disk, all left over from the previous night. I keep my phone close, because I don’t know when something urgent might come up. Part of me is still there. How can I be lost in my words? I write in my notebooks in fits and bursts, unlike the steady stream from the yesterdays I remember fondly.
Yes, I agree, it’s about the quality and not the quantity of the writing. But I really miss the sheer exhileration of writing away with a pen, a story playing in my head. It’s a wild sort of abandon, much like what a motorcyclist feels riding down the road at insane speeds.
Of course, I’m not the same person I was back then. I have much more responsibility — jobs and tasks that I must do. I’ve been performing live, true storytelling for over a year now and I’m doing a new story on the 10th of September (if you’re in Mumbai do come for the show, ((shamless plug)) click here for more details)— a story about how I got started with writing. A story about the first story I wrote.
Within the story, I remembered and relearnt, the importance of blogging and what role it played to get me started. I realised how much I miss Medium. I used to be super active, but lately I only browse by.
I think I’m going to start spending a lot more time here. Actively take out time for Medium and the amazing writers on here who inspired me to keep going, back when I started out. I’ve really missed them and all the wisdom from their voices and words. I think they were the reason why I could sustain my writing and publishing schedules in those early days.
But things aren’t the same on Medium either. It’s grown up. It’s earning money and paying others with it, and instead of those adoloscent hearts that it used to give, it’s changed to adult clapping which it thinks is more polite. I don’t know how all of this works, but I can write and that’s what Medium was always about, for me at least. So that’s what I’m going to do. Let’s see where it takes me.
Akshay G. wishes the clapping system could be replaced by a fist bump system. Your interest can be measured by how hard you bump. (There is nothing like a full blown punch to show your love. Force touch on iOS anyone?)
