Warning: This is going to be pretty long. Proceed and get bored at your own risk!

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I should probably start with wishing new years to all of you, but I am sure that I am very late for that, very very late. So, shall I just go ahead and ask you if you have reached that point of the year, when you have started feeling that you are probably wasting this year too, and that even this year your resolutions are going to go down the drain, or better still, all the optimisms and the thought that this is going to be your year has slowly been washing out of your system? I am certain, that I am probably late for even that question!

Yes, I am extremely late for almost everything now, may be even writing a blog post too. For all I know, everyone whom I knew has already gone away and I might not even hear from you guys anymore. Agreed! I have been away, for far too long. And perhaps this is the most that I have been away from my blog, and stopped writing since I have started writing here, since the time Aesthetic Miradh exists. But I just didn’t have the energy, the courage, or the will to write anything. I just didn’t. It couldn’t have been a writers’ block, I am sure of that, it was something more than that! Words didn’t leave me, I still had those conversations with myself, those dull drab uninteresting posts were there, but those were only in my head. I lacked something, or may be I was just being lazy!

I have been staring at my computer screen for quite long now, and it has taken more than I can tell to even write these useless words so far. I have been booting my computer for the past few days, staring at the blank screen for a while, drinking cups of tea/coffee/hot chocolate one after the other, (not necessarily all in the same day) and yet I wrote nothing. Daily, I switched on the computer, and after a while, switched it off. It went on for a few days but today, I am finally writing here (hopefully posting too), but what am I exactly writing, I am unsure of. What I am sure of is, I am cent percent going to bore you by the end, and you might not even know why I wrote this, or in all probability why did you even read this?

So, what have I been up to? (Yeah, Moushmi, now is this becoming your daily journal? No one is interested in knowing what you have been up to!) Unlike my writing life, everything else hasn’t been stagnant. Well, life kept moving on, but I don’t know if have matched pace with it. Things have been happening. Work has been piling. To- read books have been stacking, so basically everything has been hoarded so far, so much so that I can’t see beyond it.

There was one respite though, the only thing that I kept looking up to everyday. 2019 was the year when I planned on writing a poem a day. Now, that sounded interesting and so fulfilling to me initially too, and I waited expectantly to write poems everyday, one after the other. It wasn’t easy, of course. And I sometimes pulled at my own head as to find any new ideas. Not that my ever-cribbing and tame-less hair had any ideas in store, but I tried it all the same. I can definitely not boast of these poems now, not when I know that not all of them are unique and certainly do not stand out. But what exactly is unique. Even the sentence that I just wrote, “But what exactly is unique.” Must have been repeated millions of time through millions of seconds. But I am still not going to boast about them, because I know, while the quantity of the poems is overwhelming, the quality is definitely not!

When I started writing these poems, I had in mind of being a published poet, if not a writer soon. But now that I have them, I am just being and doing what I always do. Being a certified lazy coward. I have a set of poems drawn out of the herd, and I did start editing them and I did look into the matter of publishing, but it all became too overwhelming, and I chickened out. But I haven’t exactly dropped out the idea; I am still looking into the matter only I don’t know what and how to do. People have given me suggestions. Some motivated me, some not so much. But I am still nowhere. Believe me, I have read about it, researched it, so much so that now it feels I should just go ahead and publish it already. I have come across so many new published writers, some have been of help, while some just competitive. I was initially surprised at how much our times have to offer, in terms of publication too. I mean yes, there is the traditional method of publishing, but there are so many other options too. And so- so many new, encouraging and even emerging publishers for new writers. But that is where it became too overwhelming and for once I thought, what the hell, I will just go and self publish it myself. It is not like it’s a great book or something. They are just poems, it is a small dream. May be I will make mistakes with my first book; I am bound to. But I have made mistakes in the past, and I am sure I will make them in the future too; only I hope I will not repeat them. We will see how that turns out. No saint, I am!

I do not have any resolutions for 2020 yet, and seeing that we are already down almost two months of the year, I might give up on it altogether. But I do have a certain idea. Wow, I am not even sure if it is an idea at all. It could turn into a series of short stories, or it could be a short novella, but then again, I keep wondering if I have that kind of discipline in me to start writing, and even if I do write, what is to happen of those boring sheets? Stay useless, may be?

Writing happens or not, I am sure I will be reading a lot this year. I am sure of that. I took up the goodreads challenge and all, of finishing up hundred books a year. I didn’t plan on it last year, but I still managed 79 books in 2019, and I would have completed a hundred too, had I not stopped reading altogether in the last few months of the year. This year, I plan on reading more. Not only quantity, but I mean to look into quality too, leaving behind all those books that don’t add up to anything. We’ll see how that goes too! Who knows, I end up only talking!

My friend Mr. Coffee Hater comes often and we have our usual nonsensical banter always, but that’s a ramble for later. So that is that! I think I should stop talking, if at all someone is listening. And if you are, I want to know what you have been up to? I am sure I have been missing out on a lot of things. Tell me what you are reading? 😉 Okay, tell me what have you been doing? As for me, I think I have I have been sipping iced coffee in winters, and reading Rumi. (Look at that me reading Rumi!) And it is still winters here, chilly, freezing winters. All I am doing is waiting for spring! I think I am just waiting for spring!!