World in my eyes
She was sitting on the floor, picture-perfect memories scattered around her. A half-full glass and a bottle of Merlot at a hand distance on the right and an empty box on the left.
The photographic evidence of the past few decades was speaking of ups and downs, smiles and tears, and a life lived to the fullest. No regrets, so to speak.
Every year around this time, rankings, predictions and retrospectives start flowing in from left and right. I call them December Lists. They look into the past or in the future with a predominantly subjective take on things.
List a structured approach to dealing with life as it happens, a sort of a mechanism to grant you the feeling that you are actually behind the wheel and it is not life just happening to you. Or… They could be as normal as your grocery shopping agenda or your personal branding online. The latter usually evolves into a complete frenzy at the end of each year.
In the last few months, I realised my personal diary was to some extent Facebook. In a few months, it will be a decade that I am present there.
Earlier this year, I have undertaken the Sisyphean task to clean up the content I have published there. But no matter how much I am removing more and more are popping up. I am not talking about the reactions or comments I have left on someone else’s wall. Purely the stuff I have published – thoughts, photos, infographics, check-ins etc.
Today, Spotify offered me playlist with names like Life Sucks, Broken Heart and some other morbid stuff. The good news is that they are obviously reading my writing musings. The bad news is that they obviously take them for real. Word!
I started playing Life Sucks. It eased in with R.E.M’s Everybody Hurts, then it went on with Radiohead’s Creep and RHCP’s Under The Bridge. Halfway through, The Verve started with The Drugs Don’t Work. All in all, a good but morbid mood. But it made me think.
For a creative individual, the worst thing is the blank sheet of paper, the empty frame or the blank space after long moments of staring at it. It feels like a curse with a spice of ineptitude and pinch of despair.
There is this desire bursting inside prompting you to unleash your creative powers and then nothing. Zilch. Null. Nothing comes out. Just bits and pieces, incoherent as ever. – a bit of a turd really. You can’t help it. It’s just the way it is, really.