(Nottingham-famous, Tom Jepson, has laid out a challenge to create content, daily, for the month of December. This is day five. #Dec19ContentChallenge )
I went back to reread all my previous four posts to gauge how I’ve been doing on this everyday writing. See, you have the vantage point of being a reader of these words, as they are presented in their finish form. Me? Even if I tried, I couldn’t forget how these particular words took shape.
In my ramble with my dearest friend, Emma, on my latest podcast episode of #Rizamblings, I touched on my frustrations of being unable break free from writing again and again on the same subject. (“Is it easy to overthink, you think?”, Emma asked, succinctly. And since this is meant to be prose and not poetry, I’ll try and be less vague.)
When I left Saudi Arabia, every poem began with this problem. I would look at it from every possible angle and feel lost even before I had wanted to write. The words were mine, yet they were there only to remind me that ‘home had changed’, ‘home had become a distant figure’, as if their shock at this was more potent than any skill I held as “poet”. Thus, for months, my poems were that endless, repeated sameness and I could notice this. Hell, I became accustomed to it.
Eventually, I guess I lost interest in regaining control. The words, in turn, gave up, too. A mutual acceptance further reinforced when I got busy with a life in Nottingham and other troubles and moment of joys grew to fill most of my present attention. That isn’t to say, my current writings and poems are totally new or exciting or fresh. Days bleed into each other, much like months, and years; then, to expect each of my writing to exist as entity of its own? That would be an unobtainable standard.
Reading the posts that I have written in the previous days reminded me of the sameness in some ways. Although, this time, it is caused by literally writing every day.
Yet, my growth as a writer has most significantly risen when I was willing to write what my intuition was screaming at me to write, with perhaps, that senseless, defiant honesty. It was never depth of thought/introspection/self-awareness (or whatever you deem as the supreme source of writing inspiration) that matured, as much as my willingness to let you in on these notions.
I know my younger self would shudder reading the above paragraphs, and probably run away on finding out I share it out in the open, without any comfort of poetic ambiguity.
Whereas Me, right now? I overthink whether any of you will even read it to the end. And if you did, how in the God’s name would I convince you, that when I sat down to write this post, I was trying to break free to write a jolly one.
Until next time.
-11:09PM