Sporadic Whispers: Musings of a Part-Time Writer

I started out this year with one clear goal on my mind: Read at least one book every month. Meaning that I wanted to complete at least 12 books by the end of this year which is something I was never able to do in the past. I have always loved reading books, reading stories actually, from a young age. I read a lot of Tinkle and Archie comics as a child and I remember reading all those short stories in our English text books as soon as we got our textbooks at the beginning of the new school year. But until the seventh grade I never read a whole book/ novel. I don't remember the title of the book but it was a crossover of the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew that I got as a prize in the previous year. My on and off love story with novels started that year and I remember reading quite a number of Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew novels during those days. My reading habit picked up a bit in high school but with school books to study I did not read a lot. I completed the Harry Potter novels by the tim

Maybe it's because I haven't read most of the books out there written by our own Bhutanese writers, but Pema Euden's "Lomba" came as a pleasant surprise for me as a reader. Having been trying to read as many books by Bhutanese authors in the last couple of years (mainly fictions), I have come across some good reads. Most stories talked about things that the readers could relate to in settings we were familiar with and a few of them made us look at things differently and touched our hearts. But like I said, maybe it's because of the small number of books I have read, I never thought someone would actually push the envelope and create a whole world of it's own in a Bhutanese book.  Since all I know about Lomba, the festival, is only as much as is written in the book, I don't know if there is any mention of the lu world in the stories told in this part of the country and if there are any, how much of it is actually described. Having finished the book just

Oh! the lies I tell myself The cloth I tie over my eyes And the songs I put on To drown out the voices in my head The promises I made myself To move on, to let go and to change I am waiting by myself in this crowd Thinking, wishing and praying To be freed from these self-made shackles That bind me to my past And keep me from reaching forward And finally breathe in the colors of life And so I write For that's the one thing That brings me the closest To the freedom I so desperately seek And pour out concoctions of feelings And thoughts that run deep in my heart

Over the years I have always told myself, and even others, that I love writing and that I will one day write and publish my own book(s). But at the same time there were many instances where I had to ask myself if I really loved writing because I rarely write and sometimes even when I muster up the will to write something it is mostly complaints to myself for not having written for a long time. And as of late I have been asking this very question to myself more frequently and really trying to understand why I ever set out to become a "writer" in the first place. Language has always amazed me since I was a child. I loved seeing how people could communicate in all these various languages and also how some people knew so many different languages. I loved how it could be used to communicate ideas and tell stories about anyone, anywhere, anything and everything. But being fascinated by language for me didn't make we want to learn all these languages. My thought was the ability

Whenever I stop and take the time to think about where my life is headed, I stumble upon a question, a question I am sure everyone of us has asked ourselves at least once and that is am I doing what I love doing? And a follow up question hits me: what do I actually love doing?  I tell myself and others who ask me this question that I love reading and writing but to be honest there are enough evidence out there that support my answer. I neither read nor write constantly. I do, however, have a list of books I want to read and things I want to write about and I constantly keep adding to these two lists. That is actually the only kind of reading and writing I do most of the time: write down names of books, songs and movies and ideas for writing and then read them whenever I stumble upon the lists.  If you are someone who has read a few of my old posts, you might be familiar with my pattern. I make a bold statement or a promise to myself that I will read and write constantly and achieve my