I don’t like my writing and I never have. I find it pretentious and lacking any sort of original thought. While I have a sufficiently sized vocabulary, I fail to use it properly. Whether that is due to the incoherent way my mind works or just an inability to accurately express myself, I am not sure. I suspect it is a combination of both.

At this very moment, I have four articles that I have written in the past year, that are collecting dust. None of these articles will see the light of the day. First, I thought their premise was childish, then I thought my writing was severely lacking, and soon I realised they also lack any spark that we look for in all the articles we read. I have been searching for inspiration for a long time but I suppose it has a restraining order against me.

“Spark” is a fickle entity. My mother used to force me to write when I was a child. Naturally, because of this additional practice, I was ahead of my classmates for a while. I received praise for it and was encouraged to write more. Happy to be praised, I would try writing more. However, I am lazy. So lazy, that I will, as a rule, wait for things to reach the no point of return, to do something. So, I didn’t write enough. As a result, other kids soon caught up to me and I was clearly not that great anymore. But I kept writing anyway. It was sporadic, but I kept trying. 

Two years back, I graduated, and my life changed. There were no more afternoon naps, no more bunking classes, and no friends to hang out with in the evening. The 9 to 6 job was a constant whether I wanted to do it or not. I took my job as an excuse to stop putting an effort into anything I used to do. Writing was one of them. I used to think, okay, I am going to go to graduate school soon, I can pick it back up then. There’s nothing better than an academic setting to get the creative juices flowing.

As you can see, that never happened. And whatever I did start writing, I never completed it. That one of year of absence was enough to kill whatever skill I had. And now when I write anything, I hate showing it to anybody. They’re lying on loose pages, waiting for my flat mates to mistake as trash paper, and throw it in garbage.

For a year I stopped visiting and reading my own blog. I would see Chaitanya coming up with yet another article, and I would feel so ashamed(?) of my incapacity to write anything worth reading. By now, I hate my writing. If I could tear my writing down further, I would. But it’s pitiful.

But you know what? There’s one thing I am insanely good at. It’s disparaging myself (hate would probably be too strong a word). And here I am, writing my best article in two years. It’s obviously nothing compared to what I used to write, but it’s a start.

I can’t say when I’ll write next, but hopefully now that I have started, I won’t stop.

Until next time! 

Ahana