It took me fifty-three short stories, over one hundred blog posts and countless journal entries to realize that I can write. The realization was sudden, and I embraced it. For too long I have run away from myself, and have denied the person inside me the respect and love for which it yearned.
Yesterday had been a very lonely day and I had been brooding over some personal relations. The sky was dripping, the air-condition buzzing and Mozart playing his Piano Concerto 21. In all, it was a perfect day to be a secluded bee. I was writing my daily journal when a vision suddenly came up. A flash. A momentary illumination. And then I decided to sit at the computer and see what happens. And, to my surprise, after an hour of ceaseless typing, I realized that I had successfully delivered the imago in print. The starting was vague, but then it began to clear-up and make sense.
I agree that I am an ambivert; and writing calls for the introvert. The outside world palliates loneliness but deforms the thought process exceedingly such that after a loud weekend you need at least ten days of mental recuperation. And that patch of ten days usually assume a dry and arid character where how much you may try to add a dollop of fertilizer, you fail to nourish the ground. But thankfully, I wasn’t under the weather or depressed yesterday, and consequently did not let the mind give up all its hope of developing a writing career eventually. Instead, I challenged it. I threw all the covers away and let it dwell on its seed. To the result that finally the thought germinated, one root gave birth to another extension, and when I ended the day’s work, I discovered that unbeknownst to me I had written exactly what I had in my mind.
I thanked myself, my mind, and the spirit that granted me the vision, the image. And I promised myself that even though I always will lack the confidence to look into a person’s eye and declare in unequivocal terms that I want to be a writer one day, I shall never deny myself the respect and love it deserves. It is true that unless you acknowledge your gifts, however minuscule the scale of talent might be, you never improve, or find the confidence to carry on. Growing up in a very conservative family I was denied the joys of independence and that resulted in me being unassertive and pale in comparison with the highly confident Homo sapiens I meet every day. Had it not been for the angel of a husband I have, I would never have known my abilities, let alone honing or nurturing them. My family does not read my work, some of friends even decline to comment on my publications, but this angel is always there to encourage me and read all my creative quisquilie. I guess we all need one such spirit to prosper in life and know ourselves and our capabilities.
Anyway, after a happy day of work I am off to my creative writing class and shall be back with a new post on Friday.
CheerioJ
