The Writer, Unfolding

Untimely is an understatement. No one ever tells you when it will happen. Discovering that one has a penchant for words and the obsession with tugging soul strings was a slow and unromantic process for me. 

It started out simply as writing my daily journals when I was still a kid. The pages were filled with endless narrations of what I did and how the day went. There was the occasional bragging of my academic accomplishments (the nerd!), a couple of crushes mentioned, and the childish complaints of a young one who thought that the world was against him. The last one, no doubt, a product of watching too much soap operas. 

And then there were the yearly essays in school where the teacher required us to write on formal theme notebooks. At the start of every school year, my eyes would roll as the English teacher announced that the topic for the first formal theme entry was "What I Did In Summer." I might as well save myself the trouble and copy my essay from last year, I thought to myself. But being the diligent student that I was, I complied. Looking back, it is only now that I appreciate the repetitive process of writing about the same topic. I guess there are times that it's only in hindsight that we appreciate our teachers. Writing about the same topic allowed me to build on my previous work, the errors, the flaws in construction, the chaos in the order of thoughts, and the lackluster ideas. Allow me to pay my dues here to all my English and Reading teachers --- THANK YOU from the nooks and crannies of my brain's speech centers all the way to the worn out, dilapidated, and de-threaded leaves of my formal writing notebooks.

You might think that after all these visits to the different stops in my memory lane we have arrived at a point when I considered myself a wordsmith. No, it would take far more years.

I was under a self-induced illusion that I was a 'writer' when I was in high school. I passed an article to the school paper and it was published. But I think it got printed because I knew the editor. I remember what it was about and I cringe in embarrassment. In hindsight, again, I think that was the reason why I was assigned the copyreader position and not an actual writing post. The task of dotting the i and crossing the t was given to me. The caret and the pilcrow were my friends. I admired the real writers in school. They were really good. When I read their pieces, I understood why I was better off with the copyreader's proofing pen. 

College was all about poetry. I wrote poems but never really read that much verse. Writing was more of a release for the frustrations and sadness in life then. 

Life after college was different. Work drowned my words. It was all about figures, plans, and targets. Of course, I used words at work. But not words. The kind that soothed, or enraged, or induced a laughing fit. 

Blogging introduced me to these words. It was kind of untimely because I was busy with work and I was in the middle of changing careers. and I never would have thought it would be at that point. It's been four years since that lovely introduction. I admit that I haven't been really faithful and committed. I can just count with my fingers the number of articles I wrote since then. But that's the good thing about writing. It is patient, never demanding. It waits for you when you are ready. 

So, am I ready? The truth is I don't know. I have started this affair with words four years ago. But I don't think I have progressed much. Heck, sometimes I embarrass myself with some pieces I wrote a few years back! And I have a feeling that when I read this piece in two years, I might scratch my head asking myself what I was thinking. For now, I actually don't care. I am just unfolding. 

P.S. No carets and pilcrows were harmed while writing this article. In fact, none were used because copyreading wasn't done. ;O)