I’m not much active lately.
I do lots of things every day; I read stories on scribophile and critique them; I write a short scene every evening; I make the notes in the books I study; I keep up with the daily routine of diary notes; once a week I visit my violin teacher and we practise.
But I’m not much active lately.
The life I’m living is very different from how it used to be a few years ago. I spend way less time with other people. I don’t use my imagination other than for the stories I work on – but surely not for thinking of how I look or what’s happening in my inner world. I gave up on playing the violin in my wonderland. I don’t do fun things with others online and my daily chats with my sister narrowed to the momentary ‘hi-how-are-you-sleep-well’ episodes.
I continue to gain new knowledge and new habits but with those I lose something that used to be. I almost taught myself to be a proper observer in the dialogues happening around me – to notice the gestures and manners of others and with that I lost the grasp on my inner world. I try hard to make hostey do things that I consider useful and healthy and I forget about doing what I wanted to do for fun. My life isn’t even boring, it doesn’t exist for most of it. It simplified down to the things I care about in the real world and it lost the magic of wonder.
How did it happen?
The changes are so gradual it’s hard to spot the exact moment where things went south. I started to blog less. I stopped rhyming silly things for the sake of fun. Slowly I lost contact with people I used to know and I made no new social connections. I kept telling myself I don’t have time for that, but then, I did nothing else either. I’d pick one pen in the evening and work on the daily exercise – and I’d genuinely enjoy it – even though it would be a short moment of doing something in the whole day.
I worked on the writing prompt yesterday, ‘think of the most enjoyable moment you had alone recently.’ I missed the word ‘alone’ and wrote about how much fun I’ve had when one of my old friends randomly cuddled me for a few minutes. That was one of the brightest events of the whole week.
I used to be annoyed that I don’t socialise enough but now I’m past the point of being annoyed. I don’t care. It feels like my life is a candle that is about to burn out, to be consumed in the daily routine, only to be powered by occasional sparks. I associated myself so much with the physical world that the magic of what I used to be run out.
And I don’t know how to refill it.
