Poornima Manco

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blogging

Hasta la vista baby!

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Two years ago, I had made a loose commitment to myself regarding my blog. I had mentally aimed to write one post a week. Not a major task I’d surmised. After all, writing was easy enough for me, and there were enough topics that piqued my interest, and I could trot out piece after piece without breaking a sweat. Well, haha to that. What I had forgotten to factor in while making these grandiose internal plans, was life. Life doesn’t give a toss about your plans. It flows gentle as a stream or gushes by like a river in flood, and you get swept along, sometimes benignly, other times mercilessly.

Life has been a bit of a storm lately. From all Hell breaking loose at work, to various familial and social undertakings, I’ve felt like I’ve been drowning with nary a straw to clutch at. In all of this, I have not once forgotten to beat myself up over missing my blog deadlines. Ah guilt! What a perverse pleasure to indulge in.

Yesterday, for the first time, I had a minor epiphany regarding my writing. My blogging is a hobby. It’s meant to be a pleasurable past time. Since when did it become a millstone around my neck? Well, since I made it one!

So, henceforth, if I need a break, I’ll take one. I want to come back to it with a renewed sense of purpose and vigour. In the meantime, adios amigos. It’s time for me to recharge, to recuperate and to recover from what has been a frightfully frenetic time. To calmer shores I head. Hasta la vista!

Anniversaries

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When I last logged into WordPress, it informed me that I had completed a year of blogging, and wished me on my anniversary. An entire year gone by? A year of blogging- putting my stories, my thoughts and sometimes, my innards, out for consumption. Traditionally, anniversaries are celebrated. Wedding anniversaries, birthdays, new years….all roughly fall into that category of having completed something, with an anticipation of the future unfolding in a similar manner.

Sometimes though, they give rise to a need for reflection. What does completing a year signify? Is it merely a passage of time, or has one grown in that time; learnt something, gained an insight, perhaps acquired some wisdom? At what point does one sit down and evaluate the merits of where one stands today, as opposed to where one stood five or even ten years ago?

For me, personally, it has been a turbulent year. I have been shaken up in more ways than one. What I have learnt is, that I am incapable of writing stories, when my mind is troubled. I need to be in a safe place metaphorically, even if it isn’t necessarily a happy one. Yet, I am able to blog with impunity, for it requires no great powers of plotting, characterisation, or an end product meeting my own exacting standards, let alone anyone else’s.

I am trying to inch towards this safe zone. Blogging is my therapy. And that is something worth celebrating.

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