This Time It's Personal

 It's a new day, a new year, a new blog and a new me...... ha! who am I kidding with this crap, right? It might take us all some time to get used to writing 2022 instead of 2021, but I am still the same old guy who wants to write, or so he thinks. I still have the same old excuses and the same old fears of failure and regret. But enough is enough! I tell myself. No more running away from my thoughts, no more hiding behind fat shield of excuses. Speaking of which, here is a list of around 30 plus excuses that I usually have at the tip of my tongue and fingers and that apply not only to writing but also for all the other things I have always wanted to do:

Mulled over these back in August when I was in quarantine with plenty of time to think about plenty of excuses.

Going through the list today I found out that most of them were silly, some repetitive, and most of them didn't have any strong standing to hold me off from whatever I wanted to do. But there are a few that have always made it challenging for me.

1. Perfection. Honestly, I think perfection is over-rated. This is coming from someone who tried to chase perfection no matter how many times I miserably failed all because I pictured it to be something shiny and wonderful only a select few could hold. And I wanted to be among thos select few. But like they say, I was "na idhar ka, na udhar ka". To err is human. It's funny how we know all these quotes in the back of our mind but we only use them as captions on our Instagram and Facebook photos or to decorate our books and journals. Making mistakes is a part of who we are as humans and it is because of our mistakes that we have come as far as we have as a species. We made mistakes and learned from them and moved on. Some even turned out to be happy mistakes like penicillin. The late Bob Ross used to say, " We don't make mistakes here, only happy accidents". So from here onwards I am ceasing my wild goose chase after perfection and learn and grow as I do everything my way, with our without mistakes.
2. What would others think/ say? I have always been a people pleaser, so naturally what they think or say about whatever I wanted to say or do was always a part of my thought process. Of course, there have been incidents where I stood my ground and fought for myself, my thoughts, and my actions but this is only on a few occasions. Rest of the time I have always submitted to other people's thoughts or what I thought their thoughts were. And even if people didn't say anything, I have always wondered what they thought about me and what I did. I am sure everyone has a perception of what kind of a person I am. I worry that my actions may change their perception of me whether it's good or bad. I know it should't bother me but it does and I am sure it does for everyone else too. But now I can't let this stop me anymore. People will always have something to say and it should be easy for someone as lazy as me to not bother about such things; it's too much of a hassle honestly. Instead I will only focus on the positive things people might have to say like a donut. I am not going to think about the hole in the centre and how there could have been more to eat if the hole wasn't there, but instead think of what is already there surrounding the hole. Who knows, it might be even glazed with chocolate with sprinkles and then some.
3. I am not good enough. There was this study I heard about a while ago. In a photography school, students were divided into two groups for their end of the year project. One group was giving a quantity related assignment, meaning they had to submit a certain number of photographs by the end of the year to pass their course. The other group, on the other hand needed to submit only one photograph that was well composed and all the other good qualities of a photograph to pass their course. Who do you think came up with the better pictures at the end? The group that needed to submit the one perfect photograph spent the whole duration of the assignment thinking over and learning how to take the perfect photograph while the other group spent the whole time taking as many photos as possible to complete the assigned quota. In the end this group ended up taking the better photographs because they were the ones who kept taking one photograph after another and improved each time. So keeping this in mind I have decide to do a quantitative take on life and do as much as I can in whatever area it may be. I may not be good enough, but I will surely keep improving.
4. It won't matter to anyone. It's not like I can change the world. Whenever I set on the journey to self improvement of any sorts I wondered how that would have an effect on the world around me. How would me becoming better be of benefit to others? And finding no significant answers I'd give up on whatever I had undertaken. But listening to the royal address by His Majesty on the 114th National Day, I felt a pinch deep within me. I can't be the only one that felt the pinch that day, I thought. And what if each one of us who felt that pinch on that day decided to change for the better? What if even one of us thought otherwise? I realised that the road to self improvement that I try to tread from time to time was not as selfish and not as useless as I thought it was and that even the smallest of actions at the smallest of levels can make big differences. Little drops of water and little grains of sand make the mighty ocean and the pleasant land.

All these factors/excuses have always held me back in various aspects of life, but the most significant area of my life it has affected is my writing habit. And writing is very precious to me because it is connected to one of my biggest goals in life.

One of my biggest fears in life is death, as must be for many of us, but I rarely ever talk about it. I know that death is inevitable, a natural process of life and everyone goes through it. But when I go through history books and read about all those great people who have lived in the past and their accomplishments I somehow feel that they still live on even if their bodies have long perished. This somehow makes me feel a little at ease. To paraphrase from one of my favourite animes, One Piece: "When do you people die? When they are succumb to an incurable disease? When they are shot in the head with lead bullets? When they eat a deadly poisonous mushroom? No, they die when they are forgotten!". But for me to be remembered long after I am gone is going to take something special. Writing is the only thing I have at my disposal that can come close to accomplishing this goal of mine. I want to be remembered and live on though my writings.

In the past I have talked about many things I want to do and achieve in life including my bucket list but I have never mentioned this anywhere because it sounds a bit childish in a sense and I was always worried about what others might think and say. But this time it's personal! I am doing this for myself.