Tomorrow I sit for my last exam of first semester examinations. That will mark the completion of the first sixth part of my stay in the college. These really were one of the fastest six months of my life – fast, true, but not devoid of anything that should happen in the ample period that six months is.
Well, that seems like a change that I can see. In the recent years of my life, although time seems to have been flying past, fast as anything, yet too much has been happening at the same time. Too much to be able to take a step back and make a proper record. Each day is worth a story, each experience worthy to be retold, but either there is no time to do so, or words not so proper in order that the thing can be described in a way that it deserves.
At times like this when I have sat down to look back, or times when I can’t decide what else to do but to recall, I return to the bits, traces, breadcrumbs, little trails that I have been leaving behind. At times they feel too grand to be contained, and at other times too trivial to be made public. But everytime, there is so much to describe, and yet words run out before one has written anything.
I can’t count how many times I have pulled up a Word document to write something, to record a happening, to word down some thoughts – and suddenly – a blackout. On rare occassions, I have been able to overcome the blackout and manage to pen down, while mostly, I press Alt + F4 and take the exit. As an aspiring writer, that is something I need to overcome.
And then I remember having periods of life – months at a stretch at times, when words have come so naturally that I have filled hundreds of pages with stories, hundreds of pages of diaries. The last time that happened was in the beginning of last year when I was working on an ambitious project, and then for a brief period when my board exams were postponed.
Since then, I have mostly struggled to write. I have been suffocating with lack of ideas, lack of inspiring prompts – or, on a personal level, a lack of properly channelled effort from my side.
Analysing the reasons for that, I think these have been months when each month has had something happening. Exams being cancelled, result being declared, university forms being released, cutoffs being announced, admissions being concluded, colleges being started, colleges being started offline, exams…
Another muscle that I think I need to develop in light of this is to embrace change in a good way, and still find time to stay true to who I am and who I want to be. To still find time to write. Maybe one of the rants that start like this abrupt article will ripen into a story that satisfies me like those that have in the past.
