Recently, I completed the setup for a Substack titled Small Heresies to separate my opinion and essays from the musings I pen on my blog. The road to this Substack was difficult, because I didn’t want one in the first place. As someone who has been writing on this blog for over 15 years, I did not feel the need to move, but given how the Internet has evolved (and devolved) I feel the need to separate theory from soliloquy, opinion from passion, theory from life.
Given the continued uncertainty of world affairs, the friction inducing Indian city lifestyle, and copious consumption of the depressing newscast, one starts to wonder what life means, what living entails. The question starts to weigh heavy on the every day. In this overwhelm, I’ve come to realise that the days march on despite of everything, and we might as well march on to their drum beat, too.
Suffice to say, I’ve been doing some soul searching these past few months. I’ve been rummaging my mind and heart for the kind of life I would like to live. It’s a shame that you have to do some amount of living, to determine the kind of life you want. By then, so much of it has already gone by. And if you live long enough on this planet, you come to realise that pondering the nature of human existence becomes a subterranean rumination for the ordinary person. The rich and powerful do not have this problem.
I am, as I have come to accept, an ordinary person. My life is one among many, and it’s possible that I will make no huge waves. Inspite of my inconsequence, I want to approach old age with some sort of satisfaction in having lived. I make no grand supplications to the universe, only that I may have lived in resonance with the person I was born to be. My aspirations have been trimmed by life. My outlook has been hedged by practicalities. My time on earth, still finite.
Of course, some streaks of disappointments exist in how my life has panned out, and I have begun to take them in my stride. What now, I ask myself having learned to love the abundance, and made peace with the insufficiences?
What now?
My soul searching has led me to feeling acutely aware of my own mortality. It might be over soon, and what will my life have been for? Doom scrolling? Partaking in corporate theatre with terrible outfits and no background score? Willing participant in the Sisyphean systems we common folk inhabit?
I am afflicted with a disenchantment of the digital world. The 90s child in me wishes we could be more analog, turn towards our origins rather than away from them. I am tired of labels, one-dimensionality of people, the erasure of diverse culture, and the tooting of the individualism horn.
I have crossed the bridge. Backwards.
In the last few months, I cut back on Instagram a lot, and friends reached out to check on me (which was rather beautiful). It was also a reminder of the many people I’ve met online, and would like to continue to know. How I will stay in touch with them is something I continue to think about. I’ve written many long form essays, spent time in prayer and fasting during Ramzan, reduced my dependence on my job for self-validation, continued my reading of century-old literature, and tried to be more present in the here and the now.
One downside of reducing time on Instagram has been that I’ve not taken enough photographs of the world I live in, which was something I did assiduously, and enjoyed immensely. To remedy this and fulfil a childhood dream, I’ve signed for at a local college’s photography course, and, in due time, I hope to buy a camera.
To cut a long story short, I don’t want to live off of the internet anymore. I want to live alongside it. I’m trying to substitute digital life with physical life. Of course, I would be lying if I said I wasn’t glued to my phone when Israel bombed Iraq on the 28th February, and until a few weeks after. Now, this is also something that I have reduced. To be fair, my algorithm is so hugely skewed that I am unable to make sense of what is news versus what is regurgitated opinion. So, that’s a lost cause.
So much of every day life has become about the incessant municipal and political corruption in India, the unbearable posturing of AI at work, and a general sense of doom and gloom that I consciously decided I didn’t want that to become the mainstay of my writing. That’s not what amarllyis is for. This space has always been for wide-eyed dreaming, head-in-the-clouds poetry, and a love letter to life. That’s why I created a separate Substack for essays about subjects that weigh heavy, become theory, and then, remain as block of text, but living goes on.
And this blog is not for AI to suggest edits, not for adveritising, not for statistical monitoring, and certainly not for monetising or posturing. It is for witnessing life.
It is for the documenting of seasons, the heartbreaks which are now more than just because of men, the yearning for community, the poetry of water when I chance upon a river, the learning of new things whether it be driving or heirloom recipes, the disappointment that despite your best intentions you cannot support the people you love in the ways they need you, and the helplessness one feels when you see someone lonely, and are unable to take away their sadness.
Here, I will do the living, and I will write about it. Because, as they say, the horrors persist, but so must we.
– S 🍃
Loved reading this and look forward to your substack. There is certainly something off about the internet/instagram these days that just feels tiring and exhausting. I have seen staying low key this past week and realised it feels quite good to do so. But it was also on my mind thanks to your experiment.
Thanks for coming over to read. 💚 I agree. I would much rather prefer to sit down and talk to you and others. Something tiring about all the screens. I’m sure you’ll find lovely new ways to stay offline. Do share.
Looking forward to posting essays on Substack too. Let’s see how it goes.