As Good as a Reason

Sixteen years. Happy sweet sixteen to my blog.

At this point, I am chronicling my life experiences and indulgences on here; I am also documenting the trials and travails of living. This is my organic, beautiful, and sometimes, unsure space for being who I am. The rest of the blogging world has moved forward to other pastures, understandably, but I don’t feel the need to go anywhere now. In my younger years, I wanted to move, to find sublime scenery, and perhaps, diverse readership. Now, I am content to be a tree that stands in its original place, and simply does what it has learned to do: adapt and grow.

The last two weeks of my year-end holiday are a reflection of how I feel today. I’ve had a routine, slowed down my schedule, taken care of my body (gymming) and mind (reading and writing), and felt no need to take long journeys for the mean time. I have also greatly reduced my reliance on social media for how I want to interact with the world specifically when I realised that short bursts of activity and thought vomit is not useful.

In the old days they used to say that one must not believe everyone one thinks, and one must not say everything that comes to one’s mind. The internet as it stands today, does both these things with great rigour, and with little regard for social etiquette. Of course, a lot of lovely things reside online, but I believe we require a kind of discernment of which voices matter and that comes with experience and a whole lot of nuance. Immediate attention and response are energy bursts that come and go in a flash, they don’t power anything.

Everything that matters takes time.

This also applies to engaging with material online. For example, I know that my Substack news feed is full of people, but given my own attention span and the time I have reserved for others, it is only humanly possible for me to meaningfully engage with a handful of writers. Therefore, by and large, the Substack feed is basically noise to me. There are only a few people I can know more of, hear from, and talk to. This applies to the rest of the Internet, too.

So, instead of going outwards this year, I tried to go inwards.

I tried to make a listicle to recap my writing and observations for this year, but I was unable to jot down in bullet points what quiet expansions have come about. In trying to go inwards, I have had to trim the outsides. I’ve had to remove the voices that don’t uplift, gravitate towards those who create instead of critique, and re calibrate what it means to be alive: to experience life and then, to disappear from living.

It is this disappearance from living which has inspired me the most. If my life is finite, then what does it mean for me as a person?

Am I here to engage with ideas that make the human experience lesser?

Am I here to wither away my body’s energy and muscles on that which makes me ill?

Am I here to weather contaminants in air, water, and food as a badge of honour?

Am I here to waste my finite hours on doing things that bring me no joy?

These questions, and more, ran in my mind all year. I have not used death as a milestone from which to “work backwards” but I’ve spent enough time on this planet to know that in the end, everything comes down to naught. I don’t want to make it sound like I’ve figured it all out. I haven’t. Because the truth is that no human on this planet, ever, had it figured it all out. That’s not what life promised us.

We were only promised time, free will, and fear/curiosity which are two sides of the same coin. Then, we were left here on Earth to do as we will.

So I guess, that’s my sixteenth year rumination on this blog. I am an old tree, standing my ground, weathering the seasons as they cherish and ravage me, all while I observe and grow. And here I will come to write about it.

For as long as I can. 💌

Happy sixteenth, to me!