Writing About Writing

I’m not sure if what I'm about to write is _read-worthy_. I can think of people who might argue that that anything that someone thinks up and records in text is worth reading but I haven’t come across one yet.

I am writing now because I haven't in a while and I have been meaning to. I write for the sake of writing more than to make a point. What I write tends to end up on my blog because that is how it had always been.

I used to do this with intent a few years ago. I believe that what I think up and record in text should be recorded somewhere where someone might find it at some point and think, ‘Wow, people did take themselves too seriously.’

My therapist thinks that I should write more often, probably because I tell her that it's therapeutic. Many think that the world is at its selfish worst, and that people do things to make themselves better. Going by that logic, my therapist shouldn't be advising me about how to get better without her getting paid.

Yet she does. So does my shrink. Both seem measured, level-headed, well-intending people trying to do their jobs. They earn money in return of taking care of others with psychological troubles. I was supposed to do the same in a more physical manner, but I instead decided to pursue my artistic/creative side twelve years ago.

I write because I feel good when I do. To be more precise, I feel better _after_ I finish writing. I feel like I have accomplished something. Everyone is trying to accomplish something or the other, which involves keeping themselves busy and labelling themselves productive.

I like to think that I’m being busy and productive. When I started typing this, I had two content streams assaulting me. A live cricket match on the TV and a on-demand mixed martial arts event on a screen above the one that I’m typing into.

I was hardly paying any attention to the cricket match, mostly because I could rewind it if I realised that I missed seeing something exciting. Mixed martial arts is the perfect blend of athletic artistry and primeval violence, and the event I was streaming was something that I had wanted to watch.

It was difficult to focus on what I wanted to write or whether I wanted to write at all. It would have been either writing or reading, but writing is what I felt like I haven’t done enough.

So I continued writing. It's a pretty easy way to feel as if you have done something worthwhile without caring about the actual worth of the thing you did or the time you spent doing it.

I have anxiety probably because I do many things at at time. Yet I am forced to because I feel like I haven't done enough. The cause is the effect is the cause.

I feel the need for people to tell me that I did well. My life feels like a constant battle to prove to everyone that I’m worth existing. I guess I’m chasing my own legacy.

Legacy is something that gets built over the course of someone’s life without them having a say in whether they want one. The foundation is laid before you know what it is. Then you spend the rest of your life building on it in an effort to save yourself the embarrassment of leaving it unfinished.

Foundations left unattended eventually become pretty when the elements take over, but the people who tried but failed to build on them won’t live long enough to see the cosmetic makeover of the thing that symbolizes their failures.

Dancing

I never liked dancing. Watching people dance is one thing, but doing it oneself brings a shudder. I guess I should not generalize it. Doing it myself brings a shudder.

I have been asked to dance at weddings, parties, discos, beaches, and shows—hell, even the shows where I’m one of the people responsible for getting everyone to move. Playing music to get others to dance feels a natural extension of my role in this world. Participating in it couldn’t feel more alien.

I grew up feeling that I lack a penchant for physical coordination and three-dimensional orientation. Things that people take seconds to figure out would take me minutes, and stuff that people would master in hours would take me days. I would be left feeling disappointed with myself to even dared to have attempted new things.

I remember having to confront two activities that I was eventually able to conquer—playing music and typing on a keyboard.

Everyone is aware that playing a musical instrument a difficult task, especially in the early stages. It is worse when the act of playing an instrument involves physical movements that have no equivalents in daily activities. Holding a few strings against a piece of wood with the tips of your fingers of one of your hands and trying to trigger vibrations in a few of them with the fingers of the other , while taking care of melody, rhythm, and precision, is quite a leap of grace for someone like me. I’m sure it is not too different for others.

Things get worse if you seem to be in perpetual competition with peers, which I was in this case when I was taking my initial lessons in guitar. My friend, who was younger to me, seemed to have so much more grace and leaning to mastering this complex motor routine.

Unfortunately, this friend—who I’m not friends with anymore—is also involved in the second example. On my teens, I used to frequent a friend’s place. The guitar-peer friend and I used to meet our older friend, a teacher of accounting, who was a couple of decades elder to us. We used to talk about music and technology, primarily computers and hi-fi equipment. Our older friend had poor vision and used to have trouble preparing tests for his students.

That evening, a few days after I got my first personal computer, I was trying to help my friend finish a test. I was at the keyboard and I was asked to press a key. I did not know touch typing then and I looked down a the maze of letters, symbols, and numbers under my hands. Every key looked like it could be the key I was looking for, but only one was the right one and couldn’t find it.

My friends were over my shoulders calling out where it was. They were laughing at my inability to see things that they could so easily do from farther away. I felt bad and felt my heart racing. My body was telling me that if in the setting of a jungle, this sort of inability would be tantamount to risking my life.

A couple of more letters later, I stood up from the desk and told them that I’ll learn the layout of the keys before I try doing this. Within a week of practicing for an hour daily, with the help of a free typing tutor, I could type without looking at the keyboard.

As I type this, I know that I will feel confused if I look at a keyboard that I can easily touch type on.

In both situations, I had to dissect the process of mastering a skill, work at it for durations longer than someone else would, and slowly bring me up to a level where I can stand shoulders levels with everyone else.

So what about dancing? Why haven’t I attempted to start the process of breaking it down into bite-sized chunks? I don’t quite know myself.

I started writing after I heard the song “Dancing In The Moonlight” by Toploader earlier this morning.

“Dancing in the moonlight

Everybody's feeling warm and bright

It's such a fine and natural sight

Everybody's dancing in the moonlight”

The song sounds great but the lyrics are as unavailable to me as are blue skies that are hidden behind the thick smog this morning.

I guess I feel a certain sense of physical revulsion toward seeing myself dancing. I’m not talking about looking at myself in the mirror. Instead, more like splitting my consciousness from body and observing myself from a metaphorical tree branch.

Something doesn’t fit right. I have not quite ascertained if my discomfort stems from seeing myself emulate the physical movements that constitute dancing. Or is it the difficulty in seeing the discordant feelings of joy and contentment told through my face and my eyes, which if was able to do, would fees like a betrayal of my true self.

Unlike the processes of smoothing over of the two cavities, which seem to have left indelible memories, I don’t feel the need to mend the situation I have not yet felt inadequate because of my inability to dance, nor have I felt the need to aspire to emulate someone or something inspirational.

However, I must confess that I have at least one person in my life who likes dancing who, thanks to their generally uninspiring, condescending, and irritating nature, continues to push me away from dancing.