Why I Write

Well, well well, here we are. I welcome you on this journey, reader, to figure out why I do write and why you should read why I write 😄 This isn’t going to be some serious contemplation the history of my failures and my struggles as a writer (I’m not a serious writer lol). But again, it’s a much more unrefined version of why I do what I do, currently (i.e. 2024) and how it’s going to change in the future.

I’m not a really good writer per se, but this is just an attempt to capture some of my thoughts on why I write. It’s not a crazy insight into the heart of why people write or something motivational. It’s a bunch of reasons. That’s all. Don’t expect more.

A history of me

Teenage Beginnings

Earlier, when I was in my early teens, I used to read a lot of books. Fiction and crime thrillers mostly. Dan Brown, Sidney Sheldon, Rich Riordan(I used to read him waay before these people got famous lol) and many others were my goto novelists .These used to spark off my ideas and thinking. I thought that maybe I could be creative enough to write books someday. I even wrote some, but in retrospect it’s mostly shit. It can be well summarized by this video.

I was so fascinated with science fiction and idea that creative worlds can be conjured by these “wizards of words”. But as I entered high school, I saw that I was not cut out for writing words and stories. I was not interested in the creation of creative stories. I was a consumer of content rather than a creator. I gave up on writing my own stories and just forgot the concept of writing.

I adopted a low-profile approach to reading books, given the limited time available due to increasing academic demands. Consequently, I shifted my entertainment preferences from books to movies and shows. I remember this was due to the increased informational transfer capacity (upgraded internet connection 😂) in my home, which allowed me to be exposed to more “rapid” form of content. This reduced by book reading capacity by a lot, but I do used to read. Also, my reading got a little mature. I went from reading simple novels to novels with complex ideas and advanced world building. I realized that whatever ideas left in my mind of me being a writer, it all just dissolved after encountering the advanced prose and imagery of O.Henry and Rabindranath Tagore.

Epiphany

Fast forward few years, I realized that the concept of writing for monetization and the title of ‘cool-best-selling-book’ was just one facet of why people could do write. Some write for fun. Some write for the musings of their personal self. I realized that I should embrace my own inner thinking and flesh my thoughts out. What better way to refine your gray matter and neurons, than by embracing the physical creation of cerebral neurochemistry and putting the pen on the paper (or fingers on the keyboard)?

I started to understand that writing is supposed to be a multi-dimensional endeavor, with rich concepts to choose from, and to represent these concepts in the structures that I could conjure. It was at this point, the realization struck me regarding the beauty of living in the digital age. Able to recognize and peruse through filtered and unfiltered thoughts: from random strangers from the internet, to highly qualified individuals who write for a living, I slowly recognized that everything and anything was possible.

Trial Blog

In 2022, I kinda wanted to branch out my thinking. Put the words to the thoughts I used to have. So, I started writing on Blogger, which went on for a year. It was fully pure thoughts. Unfiltered content, without any second guessing. I used to write what I used to think about the topic. It was fun and lasted over a year. I used to put out content, somewhat monthly? It was a really fun process, seeing and reading my thoughts from that point of time.

It was at this point, I realized, why I wanted to write. The ‘what’, I first understood, the ‘why’ was the next ‘aha’ moment to follow. I wanted to write, to leave a mark. Not for anyone else… but for myself. I don’t want anyone to commend on how crazy I write, I just want to put out my thoughts to the world….and expect nothing. I cherish the very fact… that some of my thoughts were out in the world was enough for my puny mind.

So, that’s what this blog is going to be about. Nothing fantastic or crazy, but an accumulation my thoughts. For anyone interested in reading those old posts , here’s the link.

More reasons

Many of the reasons are already mentioned in the first post of mine, so I would not like to repeat myself. But you can summarize it to these few points:

• The need to put out thoughts in the world, for the sake of naught. For the pleasure of it.
• The very important point NOT to be judged as a writer, or a blogger, or any kind of carefully constructed ‘internet personality’ template.
• To keep this going for a long time. These are “photos” of my thoughts.

During the year of 2023, I found out the concept of digital gardens, which was another fascinating concept. While initially, I thought of starting this website as a digital garden, I would like to say, this is not one. Again, writing should be fluid, like how great writers aspire to capture the thoughts of the mind, so do I, in my very own way.

I would like to suggest the viewer not to think I’m trying to be funny or sophisticated here. It’s not my goal to come off as a smart and sophisticated person who probably speaks like Shashi Tharoor in real life. But the veil of anonymity provided by the internet should not be a deterrent for you to consider my thoughts as my own perspective and not some carefully curated content that is meant to excite the brains of the reader. TLDR; this is random shit, and you shouldn’t expect high quality stuff from here 😏.

These writings might be erratic. As most blogs are in the internet, I do not want to post some random posts for a year and then go silent for entirety. I would like to curate this website over a longer time. A glimpse in the innards of a growing guy. Always remember, I am not telling you how to think. I’m telling you my story of how “I thought”. People seem to forget the difference between this. I would like to put this as a reminder

Why not X(the platform)?

While Twitter seems to be the obvious choice for micro-blogging peeps, I think my thoughts should be more coherent and a bit drawn out. Currently, I don’t post much on Twitter, which might be the point of micro-blogging. I’m not trying to maximize engagement or anything. And I think, even though deep insightful thoughts are appreciated on the platform, I do not know. I don’t “feel it”. I think on twitter thoughts are put forward, and forgotten. You don’t have to think about the tweet about something you posted 4 years ago, as informative as it might have been during that time. The same is going to happen here, but at least, here I’ve curated my thoughts, so as when my future self reads it, he gets a better analytical idea of how his young self thought.

Conclusion

This is more of a for now content, this will change as with time. I kinda want to implement a versioning system with this, so, let’s see how far this goes. Moreover, this is not an exhaustive list of my reasons with writing. As time flows, with added maturity, I will add more thoughts. But as with the end, this is the end of the post.

Additions

August, 2024

As I look through the different and new things I’ve learnt over the year, I’ve come to a rather interesting conclusion, nobody’s got the ball on anything that’s going on. Great thoughts have been thunk (yes, I don’t know the legitimacy of the world lol), and then discarded as a waste. Thoughts that were never meant to be heard were published and became great works of art or knowledge. Pictures of the most private moments in an individual life, one of personal accomplishment, reactions to war, facing the death of a loved one… have been published and are available for anyone to see and experience.

I see, that my thoughts too, though tiny and inconsequential, form a bundle of experience in the novel of humankind. Though I’m a statistical blip, a nobody in the random playground for immortal quarks ¹, I existed. I had a conscious life in the 21st century and hopefully hope to live through to the 22nd. We are but little blips of ordered packets of entropy in the vast sea of chaos following the Second law of thermodynamics.

Yes, people will smirk, humans will die, the mountains will erode, galaxies will rise and fall but what gives meaning to it all (at least in my opinion ²) is time. I know I kinda echo the ideas from this movie scene (It’s Lucy, if you were asking), but ‘time is unity’ and I feel like I have to make the most of the time that has been given to me. In one of the many things I hope to leave (when my timer is up) is not some legacy, not some land, kids (maybe?), but I would like to leave an imprint of my mind.

A man will die, but not his ideas - Happy Nation, Ace of Base

I know in the future, we will have neural implants, that will be able to read impulses and experiences from the brain, but I still feel a connection to language, the first technology, that enabled up to communicate in the abstract. What I write, hopefully , gives some pleasure to some other person (human or AI, I don’t mind 😂) and think “Ahh shoot, this shit of a person existed too”. This is my contribution to the unstoppable river of time.

This is is the latest updated on 03-08-2024