Of It Being A Really Rather Long Time

I’ve gone rogue here. I’ve started typing on WordPress after REFUSING to take an interactive tour of the WordPress Editor. No, thank you. I was here before you were born, son. Well, technically, I did exist before WordPress was created. But, what I meant was that I was publishing hundreds of posts for more than five years here before this fancy schmancy editor came into being that I honestly don’t understand most of as I look at it from the corner of my eyes. No, focus on the words here, Amrita. You haven’t even written a grocery list in days, let alone anything creative.

Yeah, so it has been a really rather long time. To be fair, I did this blog (don’t think “wrote” is enough of an action, considering all the thinking, feeling, writing and other things I did when I, uh, wrote this) in a dedicated manner from 2014-2016, and then became more and more sporadic as time went by. But, the last time I posted was June 2020. I have wanted to come back and drop a line (and now this does feel like a legit “comeback” instead of just releasing another album in less than a year and hyping it up) but as I write this, I’m beginning to wonder: is there anyone even there to come back to? Have all my readers also similarly exited the blogging life, and am I trying to show familiarity to people who have never even met me before? I can’t claim to know I’ve met all my previous readers, because not everybody left comments or engaged personally with me. However, I know I had a small but solid group of people who dropped by every time I felt I needed to connect to the universe in the only way I can.

Of course, I’ve missed this. I’ve taken my self-loathing to a whole new level thinking that what I did here was sacred and I should not mess it up by posting more: it was sincere, it was pure, it was me without the noise of communicating with real life people. Okay, so that last part doesn’t sound so good, but what I mean is that all other communication is anticipating reaction from either a specific person or a specific kind of people. Here, in this blog, I choose not to worry about any of that. It is me pretending to myself that no one will judge me here even if, you know, it’s open access and once upon a time, hundreds used to read it.

I mean, someone else would probably have tripled their output here in the last year or so. I have thankfully been employed for all the time we’ve been going through what we’ve been going through, but I have had plenty of time staying at home all day. I was surprised to see my daily stats rise up and all sorts of posts getting read; clearly people were discovering and finding comfort here and who knows, posting more regularly might have reinvigorated this space and my enthusiasm for it. Taken it to places I never anticipated before, and brought some positivity to my life that has especially been lacking it in 2021.

But, yeah, I did none of that. It felt irresponsible, for one thing. I know many have created ongoing narratives as this thing happened to us, but I felt like it wasn’t my place to add to it when I had nothing useful to say. My panic would have done no good to anyone, though that maybe why so many people dropped by, because so much of this blog has been about coping with the uncertainty of life.

I also, especially, felt that this was done in a certain way and it was better to preserve what is good than to add another boring, banal chapter titled The Pandemic Diaries or something. What can I say? For the past one and a half years I have been safe, somewhat functional, and serious illness free. Emotionally I have been all over the place, unable to process how much of my life has been minutely affected by what’s going on. I’ve had to put on hold a career and residence change and it seems as though 2020 was the height of productivity compared to how 2021 has been for me. If I had posted through all of that, you would have had some regular, unimaginative whining. Much like today.

But, as OG readers will know, I’m not a complete Debbie Downer. If I haven’t posted my pretentious musings on everyday life for over a year, I have been posting some spontaneous dancing to Dua Lipa’s “Levitating” and making my neighbours hate me as I sing Evanescence’s “My Immortal”. (This is the point where I plug the channel and ask you to subscribe to it here )

And doing it has brought me joy: something I wish to cultivate more of as I’ve had one of the most miserable years of my life that I can remember. I’ve so much to share, so much to unpack with you. Who knows, I might even enjoy thinking again as I write to you, and get out of this stasis.

How have you been? Share whatever you like in the comments. Let’s get chatting.