Simply starting

Returning to blogging is a bit like riding a cycle after a long time. The strange wobble that runs through the cycle as you begin pedaling. The familiar illusion of control as you cruise for a good ten seconds. The terrifying realization that you're absolutely not "killing this". The inevitable crash. The sad attempt at trying to get back up with whatever dignity you can muster, while two people down the street pretend they didn't just see you take a tumble. 


Given that this could also double as a terrible metaphor for adulthood, it's possible I haven't missed much. 


I remember my first blog like a distant, vaguely repressed memory. In a rare fit of grandiose self-belief, I had called it "What Was I Thinking?" To be honest, I did have an impressive range. I covered everything from teenage angst to artsy-fartsy to possibly decent. I just knew, with a misplaced sense of great certainty, that the sleeping author within me would soon awaken and I would live the life that I had always dreamed.


It has been several years and while I am a writer, I'm not the kind that creates fantastic worlds and well-thought out characters in stunningly subtle shades of grey. I write about hardware. It may not be Pulitzer-prize winning but it pays the bills. But to my own credit, my life has taken twists and turns that even the wildly imaginative 18-year old me could not have seen coming. I'd always thought that, as I grew older, the words would present themselves with a little more ease. That, somehow, stories would begin seeping out of every new smile line or wrinkle. 


Spoiler alert: it does not get easier. If anything, it's so much harder now.


The blinking cursor now fills me with a growing sense of dread. What could I possibly write about that anyone would even want to read? I don't have a particularly fascinating life, my opinions average, at the most. And yet, I feel that familiar pull towards the possibilities that a blank page offer. And I remember what 18-year-old me knew that I have now forgotten: if I want to write, the best way to do that is to simply start. 


So this is me, simply starting. 

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