Chapter one: The Tipping point

Here it goes my first attempt to write a daily journal. I've been thinking of staring off but lacked a tipping point. You know a trigger one needs, to start, to ignite. Though I am not new to writing, I've started this form of communication way back when I was only 12-13 yrs old. I started off by writing short stories in hindi and some in English. The funny thing about them was almost every story I started had finished midway, never complete. I can hardly recall a story I've completed and that was the way it was. It shoed a distinct character about my personality, which of course I later realized and I'm trying hard to rectify that. This trial is one of the way, I thought, might help me overcome that obstacle of ending something for good.

As my unfinished stories went along, I flirted with another idea of writing prose. Yes prose. I can hardly imagine a kid writing prose, but I did. The content varied from nostalgia, mysticism, village roads, untraveled destinations and of course being a human more than anything else romance. I don’t know what the heck I understood about romance at that age but I use to write stuffs about longing, wanting, being wanted and touching. All sensory stimulating stuffs which otherwise would sound pretty good thing to start off with, but ended up in repetition. When words or phrases like – "I don’t know why"," you are my… "and "walking down the memory lane" started featuring in almost every alternate writing I decided to bow out of that as well.

And then there was a huge gap. For almost two years I never wrote anything worth mentioning. It all started again with my first blog, which I wrote three years back from now. It was a good initiative and I decide to continue it as long as I could. But I guess that was meant to die from the moment it started. Firstly I thought to myself about the content. What should I write? Since the first article I wrote was quite good, I started thinking to myself that the subsequent articles should at least be of that quality. So I took some time out before I could think about something good to write and days became week, and week became months and before I wanted to start over again it would look ridiculously too long. So I decided to dud that stuff as well. But I guess I'd prove myself wrong here.

I've always been a net savvy guy. I liked stuffs on the net, new applications for the OS and liked to discover all that I could, by myself. That was, when I was young. But ever since I came back from college and got a job here, things have been different. I still have the flair but lacked the patience to learn an application even something as useful as excel or access. And I guess during that phase itself I opened an account on face book. It is one of the craziest inventions of our time. But since that was very early days of face book only a handful of friends were there to share my space. So I decided to stick to only one social networking site- orkut, which was very famous by that time. After almost two years, a couple of weeks back, I noticed that in one of my unused mail accounts I've received almost 50 odd friend requests in FB. So after a lot of trial and error and a lot of "forgot my password" I finally logged on to face book. It almost took me an hour to approve all the friend requests and read all the messages I'd received all this time. But the reason why I'm mentioning all this is because of a small incident. I replied back to a college friend who asked me about my whereabouts, almost a year after his query. The idea was very casual. We talk over phone every month and there was nothing very serious about it. So I casually replied him. But as I replied him back, something struck me. I thought to myself that I challenged my own character by doing something which otherwise I'd never have done. I completed the circle. I rounded off the figure and that little insignificant thing changed my decision. I thought to myself that if I can reply a friend back after 1 whole year, I can continue my blog as well which I'd left some two years back, or may be I can start off with all the unfinished deeds I've ever done.

There is a sense of satisfaction upon completion and this satisfaction, one can feel only after he completes the circle. I believe there is no better feeling in this world than ending what you've started and this is why I am here.

I may not write always. I may be very irregular at times, but I'll continue doing what I can and what I love doing and by simply joining the dots I truly believe I'll put an end to an old habit.

Monday, August 02, 2010