Eighteen years ago, as an eighteen-year-old (gasp! half-my-lifetime ago!), I decided to put my words on the internet. On a “blogspot” blog, with unfiltered thoughts and wise quips, heartaches and complaints.
And last week, wrapping up 2022, I wrote this in my diary:
Why should I write? Who cares? What’s the point of this expression for the whole world to see? I’m embarrassed by having to promote my writing on social media to get people to read my blog. The few times I feel encouraged to do it, I tire of, and heavily judge myself for, the effort it requires – it feels desperate.
I opened the blogspot today after many months, and looked for the January 2005 blogs. Instantly, I smiled. The innocence, the stars in the eyes, the assurance in my voice – I’m awestruck by the confident Vani of 18 years ago.
There are comments from strangers, some acquaintances-turned-friends, and one acquintance-turned-friend-turned-now marital partner. The blog has been such an important part of my life! Writing there gave me a platform to find my voice, shape my language, see myself grow. Indeed, writing has been a huge part of my professional life. Aren’t these enough reasons to write – to express – whether or not the world sees it?
Another concerning issue in my 2022 wrap-up:
Adjectives seem to have flown out of my mind. My vocabulary fails me with an alarming consistency. I struggle to describe the “good” things and the “bad”. Lovely. Wonderful. Beautiful. Terrible. Sad! Appalling. My emotions and descriptions, in speech and in writing, circulate between these banal adjectives. “Writer”, I want to call myself? Gah.
I don’t know what to do about this, especially when I gauge myself heavily on my ability to describe things, whether to myself or to others. Just keep writing, I suppose. The words may return when the mind is clearer, and the mind clears up – in my case, often – when I write.
At the end of a personal writing workshop with Natasha Badhwar in 2021, in a one-on-one conversation, I told her about the 18-year-old’s blog and how much I miss being that kind of a writer. She gave me an assignment that I’ve yet to do: reflecting on the question “what has changed from then [when the 18-year-old Vani was writing] to now?”
To be practical to begin with, time, and well, life. New relationships and responsibilities.
I’m more cautious about forming – and sharing – opinions.
There are way fewer blacks and whites, and an ocean of greys. “Benefit of doubt”s.
Awareness of privilege, and with that, some fear about being authentic about the things that I enjoy, that get me riled up, that make me disappointed.
Anger that writing doesn’t organically reach people as it once did, and alongside, some doubts about why that should matter – hence, my first question “why should I write?”
Maybe answers will emerge in 2023. Maybe the fog in my mind will clear up, little by little.
January is also when the sister and I published the first issue of Spark, way back in 2010. Now “on a break” that we don’t know when we’ll return from. Spark is now a teenager, as the sister called it. Thinking of Spark now is like feeling a tug on my gut strings. The air leaves my chest slowly, and a sadness engulfs the empty space. I’m amazed that for over ten years, we put out a new issue on the 5th of each month – every.single.month – no matter whether we were travelling, or in my case once, when I was in a hospital, and in her case, three days after she gave birth to my niece. We survived all that. What’s keeping us now? A kind of fatigue, an awareness that the magazine space has changed, and the editors’ life circumstances that are making the kind of time required to run it, feel like a dream. We don’t want to give up, though.
Will 2023 be the year? It seems like I’m putting too much pressure on the year already.
If there’s one thing I know that is common between the 18-year-old Vani and the 36-year-old, it is that there’s always hope floating in her self. Its dimensions may grow or shrink, but it’s always there.
Happy New Year to you, dear reader. It means so much to me that you’re here. I hope to give you more reasons to be here this new year!
Dear 36 year old Vani, do you think perhaps 18 year old Vani would say it’s cool to be who you are, as you are, at 36? To think, and to feel as you are.
From your description of her, I’d say perhaps yes.
While you’re looking to her, perhaps she’s looking to you. And that’s such a lovely thing.