Nov 9, 2013

Moving on.

I'm going to try and make sure that I don't end up taking up too much of anyone's time, and my own in fact, in doing this. However, I have been dreading, pondering over, and contemplating this for a good amount of time now, and it is not something that will come easily to me.

I have decided to shut this blog down. I am also afraid of making things more melodramatic than they need to be. Perhaps this is just another trivial insecurity being blown out of proportions by my ego and the events or circumstances that have made it possible, but it is what it is.

Let me present to you a case, then, of why I believe at least a few words should be put down before I decide to finally pull the plug.

Bear in mind, I don't even mean anything permanent. I say this with due retrospect and knowledge that my mood changes like the season. But I have long felt that this blog had turned into something that had been weighing me down.

I know it sounds bad, but it was never due to a single reason, and there's some comfort in that at least.
I made a lot of fond memories because of blogger, and my blog here.

I convinced quite a bunch of people that I was, in fact, someone who could hold attention using words. I even convinced quite a bunch of people to take up writing themselves. Most of which do not continue to write, at least to my knowledge, but a few still do. I have since lost contact with almost all of them, unfortunately, but the memory will remain for as long as I am capable of remembering.

I learned quite a bit, during this whole time. 10 years, to be exact, give or take. I am blown away by that number, now that I've actually counted it on my fingers. 10 years is quite some time.

I learned quite a bit about everything, which makes me happy. I fell in love quite a bunch of times, and it was with quite a bunch of things.

People came, people left. I wrote about almost all of it. I not only learned how to love other people, I eventually learned how to love myself, and I'm still working on it. I have written about my escapades and heartaches several times, I have even written about things I am not too proud of  But it has always been me writing all of it. No matter how high, or how low.

Many things I meant to write, and many things that circumstance and emotion made me write.

I am not aware if most, or any, picked up on the fact that my blog was at many times my truest friend. Even if my truest friend truly resided, and continues to reside, within myself. Sometimes reading myself talk to myself, made myself understand things that the past me just did not see or understand.

It has been therapeutic, perhaps in ways I can not even think of.

I learned how to write, simply because I kept doing it. Whether I was aware of anyone on the other side of the screen reading or not, because somewhere down the road, it turned into something much more to me than just a medium for getting my thoughts across to anyone willing to listen.

I have learned a great deal about myself. I have also realized, that it was the point where I started receiving emails from people I did not even know, telling me how much my words were affecting them across the world.

Be it the times I was going through, which included confronting several of my own demons, or just me trying to find my place in the world. It hasn't been easy, and to be handed a responsibility of sorts, which it surely felt like at the time - even if I'm being grandiose or just naive, was something that only made me nervous about writing, and the messages I was sending out in general.

I have traveled across the globe during the course of the last 10 years, and have only changed several times since then, arguably. It has been a journey.

A journey that included more than a year of going through, almost what feels like a scheduled by the greater design, existential crisis.

I say greater design, because I suspect it to be something people across the world go through after hitting a certain age. And I mean "age," in an unconventional sense; as just a time period in your life.

Obviously not all people go through it, perhaps not even most. But a lot of us do.

Ranging from specifics like, "Who am I really, though?" to sometimes questions as vague as just "why?"

My levels of anxiety spiked at certain times, at certain times I felt like I was going to absolutely lose it. Things got pretty bleak, pretty dark at times. I lost hope a lot, and I sometimes found it too.

For me to try to simplify all the things I have learned, and all the ways I feel I have grown, would be ridiculous to even try to attempt.

I am certain, however, that I have perhaps never felt this comfortable in my own skin before. I am somehow, by my thoughts, brought to the analogy of a snake shedding it's skin to new. It's something I've been feeling for a while, recently.

I am in one of the happier phases of my life, and this is definitely one of the better times to do this.

I am not going to remove or delete the blog, I want all the posts from all the way in 2003, to always remain here. They represent all my transformations and adventures, all the changes I've been through. They include stories that I hold on to just as dearly as the memories themselves.

Tales of people, either arriving or leaving. Tales of misadventures, and upsets. Of victory, and joy.

Pretty good stuff, if I do say so myself. It's been nuts, and I'm glad I had the time to write as much of it down as I could.

If you are here reading this, thank you. I mean it. Somehow, in the back of my head, there has always been an audience reading the words I have been typing down, and it never comprised of just myself. I would not put things up here if I didn't want anyone to read them, even if it was a subconscious decision.

The number of said audience constantly changed, too, but such is life. The only thing permanent in life is change. Honestly, none of this might even have happened, if it wasn't for the fact that there was an audience. Even if it was imaginary at times.

According to Anais Nin, "We write to taste life twice. Once in the moment, and once in retrospect."

I have written for both those reasons too, but there's been a third. I sometimes wrote just to be heard. So, thank you for that.

I do not want to think of this as an end to anything. Instead, I have decided to close a chapter in my book. This only means a new one is going to start.

If you're really creepy like that and know where else I've been writing these days, follow me there, as I continue the experience. If you don't know and would like to know, email me, because I love getting mail from real people. danish989@gmail.com

Much love, and regards.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

you are a great writer. whatever was weighing on you could not have been writing at all. i loved piece in particular as art and not essentially giving effect that you are pulling the plug. but i guess it was a need for you to go on and shut it down so all the best