Where has my appetite for life gone?
For a while now I've been practicing what I call a writing sprint. It's where I set my timer for a set duration, usually 30 mins, sometimes shorter, and I just write - no stopping for edits, typos, or blocked thoughts. I just keep going non-stop for 30 mins or less, and when I'm done, it's usually the most unadulterated piece of writing I could ever produce. It's raw, honest and utterly brutal. Sometimes it's sad, sometimes it enlightening. I do question things a lot, and I do get melancholic when I dig out stuff from my past. I don't share what I write with anyone save for one extremely good friend and my husband. Apart from both their eyes, no one sees what I write. But today, I thought I'll share this. It's not too provocative, no, not at all, but it gives a little glimpse. I'm not sharing the other writing entries because they are way too personal and hurtful to be shared.
Writing Sprint Mar 15, 2016, 15 mins, unedited, presented as was written
It’s more important to produce than to consume. For me as a writer, it’s more important for me to write than to merely read. Reading alone, without any other activity in between (like taking notes, researching on what’s mentioned, say a personality, a film, a place; or being inspired to fire a Tweet or Facebook post or Instagram picture), puts me to sleep anyway.
I don’t remember now how it was like for me when I was younger and used to read several books a week. If I remember correctly, I must have read three books a week, and a rather wide genre at that. I’d read Enid Blyton’s children’s books, Agatha Christie’s mystery novels, Alfred Hitchcock’s adventure series, Roald Dahl’s macabre tales, a speckle of Sweet Valley High here and there, and I can’t remember any more. I seem to have a wider taste then. Sweet Valley High? I’m not so much into romance now as an adult. What happened from then till now? Why did I devour things more hungrily as a youth than I do now as an adult? Where has my appetite for life, creativity and colors gone?
I say this because I know that for about a decade now, I have stopped liking certain things, and they include staying up late, partying, having drinks and chatting over life for hours, watching movies, bowling, playing board games, playing computer games (never did anyway, sorry this shouldn’t be in this category but oh well, I’ll leave it in anyway), playing any type of game that is not actual sports. See, I classify games and sports differently. Games, to me, doesn’t involve getting physical or at least not physically strenuous. In this instance, Wii Tennis is still, to me, a form of game. Sports, on the other hand, is strenuous. It requires cardio expenditure, panting, perspiring, and hopefully, a feel of somewhat runner’s high. I stay away from any meet up or gatherings involving games, although I claim that I like people, and most people, I have observed, do like games, to some level; and my not liking games greatly reduce my chance of interacting with people socially.
Well, what about having drinks and chatting? Yes, I like that, especially if the conversations aren’t about the mundane everyday life, but about something groundbreaking - something about the future or where we are heading as a generation of people, about world economics and the innovations of the present and upcoming times that would launch mankind as the supreme being that it already is. So I do like conversations like that, but if the conversation exceeds two or three hours, I would squirm in my seat, desiring very much to call it a night and head home so that I can read or listen to an audiobook while on my way home.
The older I get, the less tolerant I am. No, I’m not proud of it, but perhaps I shouldn’t stab myself for it either. Could it be a natural evolution, and just as no two thumbprints in the world are identical, no two person’s evolution is the same, and each circle of life is to be celebrated, not to be questioned or ashamed of?