Let’s play a game. The game’s called ‘Where did you spend your new year?’
Let’s go clockwise, starting from my left.
Home with family? 10 points.
Office? -50 points
Bangalore pub? 25.
Random beach? 50.
Riverside? 20
TVside? -10.
Alright, my turn now.
Goaaaaaaa.
1000000.
I win, bitches. Suck on it.
A few weeks ago, in an unguarded moment, I told M that I had the writer’s block. From the array of sarcastic replies you would expect from his Size-40ness, ranging from the moderately cynical to the viciously caustic, I was lucky to escape with a mild “You are just lazy”. On another day, I might have been made to regret my audacity in terming myself a ‘writer’ on the basis of a few thousand words here.
Anyway, I had come to pretty much the same conclusion. In my opinion, there is no such thing as a writer’s block, really. You either write or you do not. There might be moments when you feel that the quality of your output is not what it ought to be or can be. But that’s not an excuse, at least for a blogger for whom a rigorous evaluation of his work is the least of concerns. Such moments might stretch to a few hours, or a few days perhaps. An exile from writing for months or years is entirely due to lack of effort from the writer, surely.
The other day, M and R compared my output to that of Kubrick’s. I was quick to wave away the complement, as it appeared. Unfortunately I was a bit too quick, blushing before M clarified that he was only referring to the frequency and in no way, to the quality. Another awkward moment, saved by a quick swig of coffee.
M is reasonably prolific as a blogger and R is even more so, a fact that I found out only recently, since he hardly ever promotes what he writes, anywhere. You could think he writes only for his own eyes. You could very well be right, knowing R.Anyway, both of them couldn’t understand what prevents me from writing more often.
What really eats into my blogging is my habit of rererewriting. I have to go over each sentence again and again to sound out the best way to say it, which hardly ever ends satisfactorily. Ultimately, I settle for a compromise and move on, by which time, the window and more importantly the desire to write would have evaporated. This is a blatant contradiction to Heinlein’s rules for writing, as it contradicts the first and most important 3 rules.
I have to push myself to trust my instincts and just be done with it(which sounds kind of wrong) , but which is what I am trying to do now.
When returning from exiles, self-imposed or otherwise, you ought to do it with a bang. Like N S Madhavan did with Higuita. After staring at a blank screen for hours, willing it to produce my own outrageous sporting figure with an interesting real world parallel, I decide to do away with the bang. For the moment, I will just slink in silently. Casting around for a topic to write on, I consider and reject from a variety of topics – Bangalore(too wide),Endhiran(too torturous),Roy Hodgson(too early),M’s secrets(too dangerous), Quizzing(cannot come close to this), my hair(too awesome) and so on.
After some more days of this, I realized I didn’t need a topic. I could just do this.
I haven’t done a tag in a long time and when HVR stabbed me in the back extended me one, I had no choice but to accept.
The tag demands me to reveal 7 random things about myself, preferably relatively unknown facts. Sounds disarmingly easy but as I found out, it’s pretty tough , assuming you make an attempt not to state the bleeding obvious like HVR or blaspheme – according to HVR – like abhipraya.
Here goes my list.
– pretending myself to be Thomas Muster and the wall to be André Agassi. I wasn’t actually a fan of Muster or for that matter, didn’t even really understand Tennis then, but the name had a ring to it which I liked. Perhaps my preference for Nadal over Federer has something to do with those sultry afternoons I spent smacking a plastic ball as The King of Clay. No time to dream up a punny caption, just a few hours left for 2009 to end. It’s also the end of the first decade of the new millennium -the ‘noughties’ as some insist on calling it *Yuck* – but as I’m not old enough to start thinking of my life in decades, I’ll lay off that angle now.
2009 was a momentous year . Yes, it’s obvious , right? Tiger Woods and all that. I’ll not speak about the world for once, it’s been done to death, and much more completely than I can ever hope to do. 2009 was momentous for me too. In many ways. Any year leaves us with things to remember, but I think this year had things which left impressions which will last more, compared to others. The Chicken pox scars, for instance.
This was the year I turned 21. The door to maturity. I think that’s BS though, maturity is a matter of opinion. I think I’ve been mature from birth while my father thinks I won’t be mature till I die. Maturity is a farce they invented to aid legal proceedings anyway. And to control porn sales.
This was the year I got offered my first job – 2 of them, in fact. Whether or not I end up slaving at Infy/Accenture next year, that will remain a special memory of mine. My parents/peers probably considered my getting a job not only unlikely but positively a signal the world is going to end. I had even less belief than them in my academic prowess – sadly a criterion in job hunts – but I did manage it at last. I’d like to stress that it’s not that I feel happy because I managed something to be very proud of, but I managed to avoid something which could have caused some discomfort.
In contrast, I can afford to be marginally a bit more – only slightly – proud of the fact that I managed to clear the written rounds of IIFT though the elation can only be preserved if I manage the even tougher task of clearing the next and final round. Hopefully, if I manage to do that or go one better than that by getting through to a better – few are there – B-school, then 2010 will be a more momentous year and you can all forget any contradictory statement I’ve made so far.
While 2009 thus brought some life into my acads after 3 years of embarrassing fuckallness, it will also be remembered as the year where I got my first suppli/backlog/backpaper/paper/arrears. Database Lab, thou are a heartless bitch. I wish you could be the one and only , but there’s a strong possibility you were just the first of many. The first is a red-letter day for all Engineers, anyway.
Moving on to health, it was a nightmarish year. I managed to break a leg, contract Chickenpox and then Measles, all in the span of 3 months. I have been a reasonably healthy child over the years- Not to my Grandma – and this year blotted, nay, ravaged my record. The time spent on sickbed was mostly wasted on the Internet – well a lot of healthy time was , too – while I could have spent the time thinking. On second thoughts, I did think, but I could have thought something more thoughtworthy.
No, I was not hit on the head in 2009, thanks for asking.
I started being regular at 2 things, which I should have seen to, at least 2 years back – Quizzing and Blogging. Quizzing-wise it was not a very successful year counting trophies, but still, I will state 2009 as a successful year in quizzing for me, simply because I grew a lot as a quizzer. Whether or not this implies the sorry state I was in 2008, I am pretty happy at the way things are going. Lady Luck will hopefully smile on me more often in 2010.
On my quizzing quests, I set foot in a lot of God forsaken corners of Kerala I might never even have heard about otherwise. Yes, travel-wise , 2009 was a busy year. Happy. 
I did not take any major step towards deciding on my future in 2009, I still have it narrowed down to a choice between 3 paths. Very hard to choose one. Let me see. I’ll have my answer in 2010. Again, 2010 is promising to be a more important year than 2009, I wonder why I am bothering with 2009 here. 
I did not meet any interesting girls in 2009. Actually I did meet some interesting girls but no interestingly available girls.
No I do not want the *Bleeding-Obvious-Prize* of 2009. Thanks.
Less than 3 hours left. Maybe the time could be spent on creating a Resolutions list.
1. Do not think up resolutions you are not going to keep.
No resolutions then.I’m bored. And confused.
What an ideal way to end 2009.
Yes, I am. Because I didn’t forward the divine mail I received, to 27 people. In fact, horror of horrors, I deleted it. I wish I could have done more, though. Hopefully they will invent a mail client which will allow you to manhandle your messages. And then I’ll haul the mail out and stomp on it, 27 times. Waiting for the happy day.
Few things on cyberspace irritate me more than one of those mind-numbingly stupid forwards. The luck-letters are top of the shitpile but the petitions to ‘make an effort to stop the murder of dolphins in Timbuctoo’ , to ‘condemn the treatment of Indian PoWs in Pakistan’ and to donate 1 paisa towards the treatment of my inflated head’ come pretty close.
Even fewer things baffle me more than the objectives of people who create/propagate these. What do they stand to gain from passing on the misfortune to 27 more people – Some people overdo the requisite <Insert-random-number> and send it to their whole address book. I mean if you are gonna do this, you can at least do this properly.
Anyway, my point was, why do people forward these ?Is it because
Forwarding is NOT a way of saying you care, folks, it just means your address book includes me. And I’m sorry it does.It’s a mass cultural delusion that the Sun’s apparent position relevant to arbitrarily defined constellations at the time of your birth somehow affects your personality.
Totally.
Motives galore and not one of them makes any sense. Not to me, anyway. I hope some of my tormentors take note and desist from sending me luck anymore.
You may feel I made a mountain out of a trivial thing, but try getting one of those when you are eagerly waiting for an important mail/sms. Yup, that’s what triggered this post though this has been simmering in my mind for some time.
And now you’ve read this post, and there’s no turning back. You’ve to forward this link to 17 friends or you will have 17 years of bad luck.
*EVIL LAUGHTER*
Vox Populi