A Win

There are days when I feel that I have tried to do many things, but none of them have really worked out great. That maybe I should stop stressing myself out and just have fun.

There was one particular moment this month when I was seriously questioning myself.

Why am I persisting with a blog that no one reads anymore?

Why am I slogging on weekends trying to learn writing fiction when it doesn’t come naturally?

Why was I painstakingly breaking my head and my shoulder trying to write stories for a competition when none of them had been good enough to be in the top ten of any month of this writing season?

Shouldn’t I accept the reality and my limitations and set goals that were more real, more achievable?

My phone rang. The number displayed looked like a call-center one, but since I was not doing anything else I answered. The lady confirmed my identity and then told me that I had been shortlisted for Upamanyu Chatterjee’s writing prompt and requested me to be online when they declared the winners on twitter and Facebook!

The timing made it seem like the universe hugging me!

I logged on right after 1.00 pm. Didn’t seem to look too eager even to myself.

The 10^th winner had already been announced. It was not me.

Last season, I had been at 9^th position for one month. No, I was not 9^th either.

I was sweating when I realized I wasn’t even at 8^th.

After they declared the 7^th position, I signed out.

I was not putting myself through this tension. It wasn’t like an exam I had to pass to get a degree and a job. 

Maybe, shortlisting didn’t mean top ten. Maybe that call was a mistake.

I started preparing lunch and then heard a beep. I had forgotten to sign out of twitter.

I was at Number 3!

It felt like something out there reached out and told me that the time and effort I had spent wasn’t all in vain. And that I needed to keep going, keep writing.

Giving up-Not

Isn’t creating targets and deadlines for something you are doing for yourself self-defeating? Why stress yourself out, force yourself to do something which you love doing anyway?

Because otherwise I’d never do the thing I love to do.

I wrote non-stop in December in January, almost writing the same number of posts that I had written ever since I started this blog, ten years ago. Yeah TEN. I started it as a stress buster and because I liked putting words together and watching stories emerge. I became a part of a group who enjoyed reading each other’s words and that kept all of us going.

And then other things took over. It wasn’t that life got busier, it was always crazy, but I am not sure why the habit just broke. I made a few full-intentioned but half-hearted attempts to get back but couldn’t get back. No one was reading my posts anymore, so there were no commitments to uphold.

A promise made me realize, I could write regularly (even if it wasn’t always sensible or coherent). Managing time was stressful, so after the 2^nd month, I decided not to make a commitment anymore. To write only when I had the time and the story. And I didn’t write anything for the next half a month.

Everyone may not need them, but I have realized I do need a clock to run, even if I am not running in a race.

So here’s another valiant attempt at keeping the blog going, even if there is no set direction. A post you start with just keying in the words and hoping time would just appear.