A promise from six months ago

Six months ago, I promised myself that I won’t write.

Six months ago, I promised myself that I won’t write. If left to my own devices, I scribble a lot, in random places usually – the most frequently used is the draft folder of my email client, which is an absolutely nightmare to search. I also use way too many notes programs on my iPad, and just text files on my desktop. In the end, they never add up. The random notes come to nothing – I often have the urge to re-read a piece I wrote, to add something to it, but I can never find it back. The random scribblings can’t be shared with anyone because they are truly the regurgitations of an incoherent mind. The blog used to help me sort my thoughts in one place, and instilled the discipline to edit my incoherent spit ups into semi-coherent pieces. But then I got too serious about it – I forgot why I started writing. I started writing what I thought would be useful, what I thought was important enough, what I thought others may enjoy – I published pieces which I had to struggle to keep myself awake while writing, while the outpourings of my heart that made me jump out of the bed got relegated to random draft folders again. I don’t know why, but it happened. The promise was supposed to help me remember why I write.

Six months ago, I promised myself that I won’t write. Because I just had too much to do. You might say everyone has too much to do these days. Probably yes. But I don’t usually. Usually I live a full life, but a well-managed life with room to spare, well, a little room to spare. But at the time I made my promise to myself, I felt I was just about to step into a roller coaster that would throw me upside down and downside up, make me twist and turn and scream my lungs out, and trying to hold on to a pen seemed to be stupid while you could be using that hand to hold onto the seat bars, and thus to dear life. Life goes through phases, you can never predict when the next curve ball will hit you, but I am not about to enter into a roller coaster ride, I am on it and loving it. I did not know that six months ago. The promise was an attempt to force myself to pare down my life, spare some time to do the things that had to be done.

Six months ago, I promised myself that I won’t write. It was because I live by the motto, “do it well or not at all”. And that is difficult when you have a public forum that needs constant attention. I can’t write well all the time, hell, I don’t write well most of the time. But then I have those moments when no matter what I am doing I have to let go and hit the keyboard, hard and fast. In the exhilaration that follows after the act, I have the urge to share, the urge to put it on my homepage – what an appropriate name, this does feel like home – and push “publish”. But the blog doesn’t work that way, it needs constant nurture – regular posts, comments on other blogs, and replies to the comments on yours, and in general, just being available. I thought I should follow the rules – write and engage regularly, and well. The promise was meant to keep me from breaking the rules of this game.

Six months later, I want to write.

Six months later, I miss my blog. I miss my home in this wide wide web. I want to write. I want to write even if it amounts to nothing. I want to write even if it is frivolous and has no value or meaning to anyone except me. I want to write even if that means I have to sleep an hour or two less. I want to write even if it means holding onto a laptop when whooping down a roller coaster. I want to write even if I don’t follow any rules – even if I write sporadically and not well at all. I want to write because it is time to let go, to be free from a promise from six months ago. I want to write because I want a place in this space, however abstract it may be, that I feel at home. I want to write, just because I want to.