What's love got to do with it? Everything. What’s culture got to do with it? Everything. Love is love. We may express it in myriad ways, but we all feel the same high and the same low it brings. Photo credits: @virb

Hmmm. I think we can both agree — yes, you and me — that this blog has been out of the limelight for far too long (and by limelight, I don’t mean the fabulous kind, blame it on my recent writing vacation, I used the word for lack of a better term).

Anyway, for all those visiting this puny space of mine in the virtual world, and who does so every so often, let me begin by saying that although I am not really sorry, (because that is not the proper term — the word I’m looking for, the term that aptly describes my feelings towards this issue, my dear, escapes me), I am nonetheless, almost always heartbroken. Maybe I will remember the exact term after a paragraph or two, who knows? God knows how much I need your patience right now because I have run out of it for myself. I guess what I’m trying to say is that a writing/blogging vacation isn’t really good for me or for anyone else for that matter. Even for those people who stumble across my posts once in a while, either by choice or by divine intervention. And each and every time I see the same IP address arriving on my page on a different time, different day, my heart stops and bleeds — because the truth is, I never really wanted to stop writing, regardless if nobody but myself gets to read what i write. You see, what many people (bloggers) have discovered (whether they admit it or not) is that there is joy enough in publishing content for all the world to see (and read). Nevermind the prospect of fame or appreciation — those are just icing on the cake. The real joy of blogging is the act itself — sitting in front of a pc, with nothing but your thoughts running through your fingers, pressing each letter on the keyboard — that poor thing trying to absorb whatever emotion comes with each press..

You start with practically nothing — from scratch. And after the whole affair is through, which lasts variably from minutes to hours to days, the “publish” button eagerly waiting for your click seems to bat its eyelashes at you, teasing you, taunting at you, as if to shout “click me if you dare!” and the blogger spirit in you, the writer heart that you wear ever so proudly but traceless of arrogance, finally gives in — click you I will! Click you I dare!

Posts are made up of paragraphs. Paragraphs of sentences. Sentences of words. Words of thoughts. Thoughts of sparks — images conjured up by one’s valiant heart. There is apprehension, yes. But will I let it get me down? No. Will it stop me from writing? No.

The blogger of today is not so different from the prolific writers of the past, if only for the fact that once they start writing, they no longer belong to themselves, but to those who “read” them.

So yes, this blogger is yours. Apprehensively, yes. But yours just the same.

Ah yes, that “term” I was looking for? It got away. :)

So I was told. And so I believed. Experience merely reinforced that belief. I’m not gonna be particular in terms of the underlying story. But I’d say you have to trust me on this.

Career-wise, family-wise, health-wise, political-wise, and all the other “wise” there is — that proverbial silver lining does lie behind those dark clouds. Every opportunity for success comes right after that worst blow-up ever in a chemical lab experiment or that misstep that almost broke a runner’s ankle or that crucial decision a CEO almost never made. Continue Reading