Let nobody hold the pen to your life
I was twelve or thirteen when my dearest daddy introduced me to the world of books and ensured that I got into a habit of reading every day. Of course, I had my days when I absolutely detested because I wanted to engage myself in other childish fun but majorly I did adapt to what my father expected me to do. My daddy also put me into this habit of managing my daily journal and this is something not many knew around me because I used to scribble long after lights were out, in solitary, in joy and peace. I used to write more on days when I was overwhelmed with emotions- good or bad.
Sometimes I would be a sour cribber and sometimes I would be my own agony aunt and that’s how I started emoting myself better through the written words. From then to now, I have recorded many letters to my clan for the simple reason that I love acknowledging every drop of warmth and affection that is laid upon me by them and also because it makes others smile. After all, it never hurts to bring joy to someone; as told by my Mama.
My folks firmly believe I have the right potential to write my own book and they often push me towards it. The more I am seen with a book, the better get my chances of being a future-author. However, every time they brought this topic, I would whisk it off. Guess why, because I was scared. Scared of judgments. I would work for a leading website where I was supposed to write stories, cover interviews and I did that with all my heart but the moment someone asked me to blog, I would fret out. I would still doodle everything in my daily journal but would not dare to bring it out on a public platform. And I think I have finally found the courage to unlock my inhibitions.
We Indians whether we want to believe it or not, are too quick at evaluating a person and we do so self-voluntarily. We love to bombard implicit and explicit judgments on anyone we pass by, professionally or personally. And this thought perhaps had brought fear in my head. It’s a sad fact of life that there are occasions when people put their own spin on events that don’t even represent reality. And yet it holds your morales down. Sometime back, I read this quote, “Either you’re going to tell stories that will spread or you will become irrelevant.” And it was this fear of becoming irrelevant or be mocked at, which stopped me from writing out in public. Not that I never tried, but whenever I did, I would look up to people’s reaction, spend hours gunning for glory and now I know that is where I went terribly wrong. In this whole process of opinions, I almost forgot the basics, that was directed towards my own joy of writing. I was constantly looking for validation and would get immediately depressed if someone I had expected of, didn’t approve of my composition. There I was wrong again. Wrong enough to put other’s opinion ahead of mine
It took me a distance of about 8,000 miles from my home to where I am sitting right now, to
Why do I need a constant reminder that I am good enough to write? I may be doing a terrible job at it but if it gives contentment to my heart and feeds my soul then it must be serving a great job somewhere. Won’t you agree?