Blogging: web logging!

On blogger since May 2009, this description that I have provided on my personal blog, makes a chill run down my spine!  That’s almost a solid 5 years!  It makes me want to break my head, look into the mirror and interrogate myself, “Usha what have you been doing all these years? Writing has been my passion, is what I keep telling people. A true lover of semantics and syntax of the English language that I am, I did not quite put it to proper use. Call it lack of focus or laziness , I definitely do not want to resort to the lame excuse-“ I don’t have the time.” If I have the time to eat, sleep and talk to people, then I better have time to write as well, if I was that passionate.

Like  most of the school children , I had the habit of diary writing too. I never though maintained a chronological order of events. To me diary writing was more about what I felt about people, events, things or even Nature. I was all fascinated by my English Teacher, who was a simplitarian. He made me realize that I had a rare gift called ‘solitude’ ; these were the exact words penned by him on my slam book in the year 2000. I was a loner in school mainly because I had a language barrier with Malayalam. Since I grew up mostly in Chennai, I did not know how to form full sentences in Malayalam, barring a few words that were there in my repertoire.  I was teased by most of my schoolmates for not being able to speak in Malayalam, somehow all of them thought, English was the language of the foreigners only. Whatever they thought, I did not care much and loved my solitude; that gave me more room to think and delve deeper into the realms of my own world. Writing was always there at the back of my mind, if any of the classes were boring, I used to look outside the window and begin grappling for words and pen down something what I felt at that very moment. I remember, I had contributed a write-up to the school magazine that year, it was about friendship!  When I finished plus two,  I had received an award for the year for General Proficiency. The gift was a book on friendship, “How to make friends and be happy, by Dale Carnegie.” Somehow my teachers thought I needed some friends in life in order to be happy; all excepting my English Teacher, who knew me very well.

Writing was still there at the backdrop, yet  I did not do much to promote it. On a lighter note, I recall that each time I was extremely angry with my father, I used to write whatever I felt and put it up in a common place in the house and make sure it caught his attention! Saying it with words, yes that’s what I like. So there was this certain colleague of mine at Allsec where I now work ,who encouraged me to begin blogging, I had no clue what that was. To me writing was the physical act of holding a pen and see the words flowing through. Learn to type your thoughts out, I was told. Nonetheless, it somehow did not sync into me completely. I did go ahead and start a blog, not knowing what exactly to do. I was a stranger to my very own childhood hobby! Hence the name, penning reinvented. I always thought blogging is a reinvented version of writing down. I was told by many that the name of the blog was not one bit catchy et al. I stood by the name firmly though, for it was my blog, and not anybody else’s; I could have any name I wanted! I was just getting used to sitting before a computer and typing my thoughts out; to me it was lengthy procedure, a fabianistic approach indeed; yet a soulful experience! The fact that I had to conceptualize something and pen them down  into a piece of paper, and then looking into the paper carefully and typing out each and every word was heart rendering.  

Today, I blame my in-activeness on blogspot on the slowness that I was adapted to. I no more want to waste any time, though I am not bound by any targets to be hit. It is a self-enforced pressure from within, that tells me, “Usha , you can do it, say it with words!” It need not necessarily be a socially pressing topic or on any famous personality; it could just be on anything; that’s the freedom and luxury that I enjoy. Poetic or Prosaic, whatever form it may be, just write is what my heart and mind tell me.  The muse could be due to anything, regardless of the comments that I receive;  I almost do not have any I admit. Do I need to really survive on these comments? If people like something that I write, they could tell me directly, really and not virtually in the comment section. Of course, I definitely would like to bask in some sunshine too, I would love to see and hear comments, yet I would tell myself, just keep at it, no matter what. After all, writing is my hobby, and where there is passion, there need not exist any boundaries and limitations. It is a private affair between myself, the computer screen and my space, my blog, penningreinvented! And thus, at 2.10 am, in the wee hours of Friday morning, I have an addition to my space.