Writer's Block

It’s been a while since I wrote anything worthwhile; heck, anything at all. The sense of an impending writer’s block is scary in all its granduer— delusion, annoyance, restlessness. And the sense of losing your mind to the ravages of time and age frustrate my anxiety, hitherto used to childish fantasies and reckless writing.

I find myself, searching more and more desperately, for an outlet from this abyss. Even in penning down these thoughts, comes the most feared monster proclaiming ‘this is shoddy’, ‘this is not your style’ and the worst, reserved for last ‘this is average’.

I find myself asking, ‘Do I need a holiday to restart the thought process in my uncontrollable mind?’, ‘Do I need to start exercising more vigorously?’, ‘Am I eating too much packaged food?’. And yet, I know this is all age taking its toll on the child I wish I could always be.

With youth, came excitement and the possibility of attaining life, hands full. With graduation, came the anticipation of landing a job, becoming a senior at work. And now, with work, comes a sense of stagnation— work responsibly, party responsibly, and respect your body. Rinse, and repeat after each weekend.

I find myself shying away from meandering thoughts—inking a date on a dried leaf as a memoir, staring at people on the metro train and imagining a hundred different tales of their lives, imagining the big city as a zombie land with animals running free and people in zoos; from spontaneous actions—blowing back kisses to a street kid, buying biscuits for a puppy, cancelling a haircut appointment because I was floored by a kitten in a dark alley; from mindless decisions— buying lunch for everyone in the office team for no reason, spending money on a lavish dress that a friend liked, just to see her happy, telling my landlady that despite her outrageous relatives, I miss her when I am away.

I believe expectations are a problem here, and a norm in the world. But words like renunciation, expectations, belief make me feel like a fake organic-vegetable-eating-hypocrite who lives in luxury and buys health food at exorbitant rates.

I wish the fireflies I tried to bottle into a torch as a child, fearless in the thickening darkness of the night, would come back to enamour me and haunt away this subservience to the right path.