A couple of hours ago, I finished the second article for the Namasté RASA newsletter and I am uninspired to edit. More like I am too close to the work and cannot see anything but my brain doing a doom-scroll dance.
This means I cannot watch any dramas, read any book, and the only way out is to write. But the irony is that I don’t have a topic that I am fascinated enough to write about. This means that for the next couple of hours I am in brain-scarcity mode.
Let me explain. First off, when I am overstimulated, I become a crank. I don’t like activities that give me immense pleasure. I now start to detest, with equal fervour, that which I loved previously. This condition lasts for about a few hours to just about a few days. This is a serious signal that I would be useless to myself.
This wonderful cusp of discomfort and boiling enthusiasm for the uncertainty that will follow this mindset is meditative in its flavours. I have handled such situations well in my past. Days when SEO content got too much to bear and my inspiration was down to 0%.
That is when I remember my father’s Chetak scooter. Often, if the vehicle did not get started in one kick, then Appa would tilt the scooter and shake it a little, followed by kick-starting the scooter.
So, whenever my brain jams up, I need to tilt the understanding and shake it enough so that I can kick-start my brain into enjoying what it usually likes to enjoy. But sometimes I have ridden the waves of depression in the hope that all this will come to pass. Of course, achhe din are right around the corner.
I have been handling myself since my puberty, and this one is not even as bad as some of the previous ones. Yeah, I will breeze through it even now, though it does not seem to let up. In such moments, writing is the best outlet, yet not always effective.
Something is being processed in the mind and that keeps one in such a state of freeze that there is no leeway around the situation.
That is when I put out one word alongside another and hope it makes sense to me. The logical jumps and other random thoughts that enter and leave with no “excuse me please!” Well, welcome to my world of inner struggles. Of late I enjoy these moments!
Whether I learned to cope with the situation or figured out the best way to unhinge myself, I can’t clearly state. But I do get to learn about myself and the coping mechanics of my brain.
I absolutely love this alone time with no stimulation for my thought process. In this situation you realise that external stimuli can never get the brain kick-started. So the art of patience is learnt under the feet of ignoble defeat from a frozen brain.
The interesting thing is that when my brain freezes it does not give up survival routines, like drinking water, making lunch, or ordering from wherever. The physical plane is taken care of, but the mind — where I usually live alone, undisturbed by people or things, just consuming images and doom-scrolling at times — loses every interest. For a moment it feels like the mind is resetting the human mental processor.
Often, I need such a reboot, and sometimes when I am very lazy a kick in the butt might do the job too! But let’s not be violent even to the self. Coaxing is a better option though! For the past few days, I have been struggling with two things. One is self-motivation, and the other is silencing the nagging critic.
But I am happy when it happens when I am all alone. Because it could be quite embarrassing if I had an audience for it. I never feared my low dips and spikes. But I do know that feeling insignificant as a human — that feeling stems from issues which I am rarely capable of handling.
The latest trick is to wait it out. For the longest time waiting was never my specialty. But waiting for Uber with my anxiety about travelling showed me that you should not panic when the cab keeps changing its route and the wait time increases.
But I am still not convinced that I can wait it out, given my habit of diving headfirst into solving a problem when it is not my problem at all. As it is often proven that it did not need my interference in the first place. Keep calm and don’t react — a great mantra though, mind you!
This is just me and a plain sheet of diary entry. I wish that I could explore the thought to its very end, to figure out the LLM of my brain. Partly the reason why I am not worried about Artificial Intelligence outsmarting me. Since I will always be curious about the thoughts that fly by my brain, and I love following the trailing tail of their comet-like presence.
It started with a pause and value-add over the few days. When I found that it amounted to nothing — just whimsical ideation. But the fact that I have not done anything spectacular other than just breathe made me wonder what else I can do.
It has nearly been six months with Mira, and Sarvas before, when I felt I was sidelined and the journal-like works were just not happening. I must say I missed my words and poems so much. So I often write as if it is a stream of consciousness. Almost discovering the spring of thoughts after many hours of just mining for a stream of inspiration that would become life-saving water for sustenance.
I remember my first prose piece for Sulekha was Portrait of Self. The simple task was to describe who I was and what I saw. I found it so engulfing and motivational. For a moment there I believed that I was a mix of a human and a stabiliser placed below the dressing table. But I enjoyed myself immensely. I love writing with a mirror since I am fascinated by how engrossed I become when I write in front of the mirror. Feels like a narcissist — sure it is — but then the critic jumps on the wagon and the ride becomes quite rough.
I miss writing my journal a lot. I stopped since 2019. Somehow the joy of writing a journal was diluted by the fact that the journal book no longer inspired me. Once I began writing using a laptop, then the art of handwritten “just for your eyes alone” journals became exhibitionist blogging.
Unlike the journal, I often reread my blog and fine-tune it. And when I cannot see any issue, since I am blinded by the creative act, I publish it — of course continuing to edit ad infinitum.
Whereas my journal books are kept in a trunk potti, where they are secure from any human eyes. I felt writing in the Word application was far easier since some of the spelling errors can be corrected, but the diary holds my initial spellings and sometimes they are scribbled to keep up with the speed of thoughts.
The process of my brain is faster than the recording speed. I jump from one idea to another so quickly that I would have a hard time writing them down. This is troublesome when one writes a novel. The fact that I never completed NaNoWriMo even once because my story would end in 20K words.
I tried to write a novel over many months, but then I would forget the characters and their roles. Then when I reread what I have written I am compelled to correct the errors that the draft reveals after one rapid reading. This way I am not sure when I will finish a novel.
So, in the interim I am writing a blog. Earlier I used to write 500 words for my Edda-themed WordPress blog, then it became 1000 words, and now it flounders around 1500 words.
The hope here is that I would write 2777 words and finish a 50K novel. The fact that I am stuck at 1500 disappoints me a lot. Yet I refuse to give up. Because I wish I wrote like so many of my favourite writers.
Charles Lamb & Mary Lamb
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Edgar Allan Poe
Herman Melville
Virginia Woolf
Sylvia Plath
George Eliot
Jane Austen
Charles Dickens
or like the book Great Expectations
Mark Twain
The above list of authors is some of the people whom I loved and cherished since puberty. To write long, thick books is a dream on which I have not acted. The days trickle away while I am writing this trash of a memoir of my reading choices.
At that moment, I realise how much time I have wasted on insignificant things. Even now, after January turned to March, I haven’t been able to write any poem or haiku. It is like the well-spring of inspiration has ended until I jolt my senses to remain persistent in my endeavour to write.
I felt maybe if I write a poem every day then I would have a collection next year for me to revise and keep editing. It is when I feel that I am faking and not a real writer that the words stop in mid-flow and refuse to entertain my sentiments to write. Then endless blog posts float around with nothing worth looking perked up about them.
Now, the above stuff was the weight on my chest and I feel that I have got it out of my system but sullied the mystic feel of writing something so effortlessly and churning out books like it is nobody’s business, yet compelling others to buy them. (Rolling my eyes!)
As an audience, I found that I loved reading other people’s work more than my own. But sometimes I am surprised and keep questioning, “Did I write it?” I wrote a collection of poems under duress and enjoyed the vibe that I felt, but it was not good enough for me. I love the process of writing, but to try to send out my work for publishing — I don’t have the gumption for it!
Anyway, one work being self-published once is more than enough for me. I am too unsure of my own work to go through the process of submitting and waiting for a response. According to me, I am just a content writer making a living and blogging as a side gig for self-pleasure only!
Itinerant Storyteller 