She left her spotlight,
for ‘twas time for young to shine.
She had conquered Time.
Tag: competition
Aftermath of a Challenge
One morning a couple of weeks ago, I sat in front of an open document, fingers poised over my keyboard waiting for the words to flow.
They didn’t.
I was stuck. I didn’t know what to do. I sat there for about an hour before deciding to do something else. I browsed through The Daily Post looking for ideas when I found the section on blogging challenges.
It couldn’t hurt, I thought and dove in. The first challenge that interested me was the Incredible Blogger Marathon Challenge. Now that is one good title. It triggered my curiosity and piqued my ego to just the right level. I wanted to be that Incredible Blogger. And a posting marathon is a challenge I could take.
I took it. It was a ten-post challenge, but I could take up to 15 days to complete it. I challenged myself to publish a post a day and finish the challenge in ten days.
The next two weeks was one of the best spells I’ve had in my blogging experience. It wasn’t easy as eating pie. It was as complex as baking one myself. But it was great fun. I had to think in ways I hadn’t done before. And the weirdest thing is that I had to first explain to myself how I felt about certain topics, before giving words to my thoughts.
It warped my head, but it gave me something to write about every day. It kept me going, even if I didn’t want to.
And now, it feels wonderful when I look back. It forced me to explore a whole new area in writing and I’m glad I took the challenge.
Have you ever taken up a blogging challenge? How did you feel afterward?
World of Mine
From nothingness, I came
into colour, and ardour
Everything fit in — all, except I.
Who am I? Who are you?
Are you as I?
Wonder! Until —
You reached. Held on,
guarding… guiding
a watchful Eye, resting on me.
a comforting Arm, embracing me.
A look, into the ocean of your eyes —
and I realised, You are my world.
Nothing else matters.
I wrote this for the Shivers above Madness poetry competition. If you liked this, please head over to their website and vote for me. Be sure to check out other entries as well, there are some awesome poets out there!
To Do or Not to Do
I know a lot of people who regret not getting a college degree. It’s hard to not feel bad too, because all anyone’s ever talking about is what you do after high school, and after the first degree. Somehow, people have taken a liking to the idea of children living off their parents.
In India, in particular, parents are proud to spend for their child’s education – for as long as they want to study. Even though education has become one of the highest earning businesses in India, they hardly accept the futility of a degree.
So for everyone who regrets not getting a degree, Paulo Coelho has said it well. Besides, the world already has too many engineers, what it needs now is artists.
The Lonely Job
They say writing is a lonely job.
Each time I hear someone say that, I feel thrilled. Being a loner by default and a wannabe writer/novelist, it was like having my wildest passions prophesied.
That’s what I like about the writing world; being a writer would mean that you could shun human companionship, and still sound sane to most people. Of course, for some people, writers are lunatics — alone or not. But that’s irrelevant.
My point being, I was excited to constantly hear assurances that the best profession for me would be writing — something I enjoy doing anyway.
And since more and more people understand — or at least try to — the relationship between a writer and solitude, I shifted my daily schedule to include a lot of solitary bliss.
Only it wasn’t all bliss.
I loved being alone. I had a lot of time with my own head, talking to myself, reflecting, wondering, hatching ideas, cooking for myself, and even trying my hand at photography.
But the writing wasn’t coming out as much as I would have hoped. Oh, I was writing all right. I was writing every day — but it was a struggle, I had to wrack my brains for inspiration each day — which became tougher by the day.
Then one day, we planned a movie night. I got to our rendezvous point and suddenly realized that it had been months since I had been outdoors at that time, and among so many people. It wasn’t late; the sun had just set and the winter sky had darkened earlier than usual.
That’s where I saw — people. Oh, and lots of them too. It was the local bus stop and with people thronging around — it was so surprising. Sure, I see people when I walk home after work, but that’s a limited view of mostly quiet residential areas. I would actually see as many street dogs as people.
Seriously.
But that night, I could see what I had been missing all along. Just by observing people’s faces, I could see thousands of stories, waiting to be penned. They all had lives and incidents happening — how inspiring would it be to observe people’s behaviour in a public place, and weave a fictitious tale out of it?
It was an eye-opener. Though I’m not a fan of crowded spaces and heaving faces, I’ve realised that people are my highest motivators. I glean my creativity from the varying expressions of everyday life.
And I need more of that.
Where do you guys draw inspiration?
The Chaos Within 