The familiar feeling of breaking out into cold panic stricken sweat when you know you have forgotten something vital, doesn’t happen to me that often anymore……I’ve over the years realized that much of what we think is life altering….isn’t so actually…. I could never remember to bring the right text book to class…..when the teacher would ask us to take out our english grammar book, I would rummage in my bag only to find I carried the poetry text…..and then break into cold sweat…..did I also mention that I was painfully shy and would never be able to muster the courage to ask my ‘bench mate’ if I could share their book…..forgotten homework, forgotten games uniform, forgotten test dates, even once forgetting that the scheduled exam was social studies and not science that I had studied for!
I can never remember where I kept the receipt of the electricity bill….and in one shot have “misplaced” my school certificates, voter’s id and driver’s license….which I still haven’t “found”…….forgotten birthdays and anniversaries are another story and will be an unending one……so let me not even get there!! Sure I can always say that I am not the kind who believes in “date wise celebration”……I am more of a “celebrate when in the mood for a celebration” kind of person….and it suits me just fine!!
So let’s just say that forgetting things is part of my DNA…I wouldn’t recognize myself if this changed!! And in a bid to better this trait , I have trained myself to be a little better organized…………I have to do’s and lists and reminders…..and I pretty much try and finish vital stuff immediately so that I don’t forget and screw up!!
Why am I telling you all this?? Because sometime last week I realized that I have been blogging for over a year now……how did I remember?? It was around my birthday last year that I began posting with a little regularity though I started this blog in march……I turned a year older last week…..and as a result also remembered that Escapades too turned one in the very recent past!!
I had been reading several blogs for a whole lot longer than I would like to acknowledge…..totally in awe of what I saw….and often spent time trying to figure out what kind of people wrote them….what they would be like… like a star struck fan….exotic people who whipped up terribly creative stuff, took fantastic pictures, and wrote such good prose…….so even after I began blogging here, for a long time, whenever I posted something, I did so gingerly……like an imposter…..like someone would shoo me away…..i remember the ecstasy when I got my first comment …. when the hit counter registered the first thousand visits to my world……I crossed several milestones since…..i wondered if I should celebrate the number of posts and the number of modest hits……but I guess I haven’t outgrown my painfully shy self, despite the façade….. I still have a really long way to go…..but i feel almost compelled to acknowledge this year gone by…..
I am still nowhere near what I want this to be….infact I don’t quite know what I want it to be…..I remember just wanting to have a url in my name, and I couldn’t do it on another blogging portal and so I turned to wordpress…..i had no idea about widgets, hit counters and category clouds…..i still don’t claim to know very much more than when I began…..
However, this spot in cyber space has become many things to me…..Escapades, really is my getaway….where I have spent obsessive hours in front of the laptop, and sometimes gone without a trace for weeks on end…..it has taught me many lessons….but most importantly, it has allowed me to be myself……to come here and write what I want to….……
Personally and importantly it has helped me shed several ill begotten notions about many things……food sort of does that to you…opens up many worlds……breaks barriers real and imagined………..it has made me a definitely better cook…..it has broadened my vision about food, the people who toil to put it on my table, the ones who cook it and the flavours that burst through your senses……it has made me more sensitive to the world I live in….it makes me think about what I buy and consume and how and from where and at what cost…..
Blogging has infused a lot of joy and happiness into my world…..and somehow calmed me……all my life I had battled people who had some really weird notions about my “type”……the kind who try to put you in a box and stick a label…..This made me so mad!!……I think Escapades has made me calmer now….because I just channel all that energy here…… on the way I have met people I now call friends …..i have received gifts, had a peek into the lives of many I admire, and discovered many more blogs whose writers are people of serious talent……plagued some of them with unending questions that they have always answered gracefully…..
And all the while Escapades imposes nothing on me….i come here to write and post as I want ….yes at some point I did obsess over it, but that too taught me that if I turned this into a chore, it would just die on me……
Coming to think of it, I didn’t think I would last this long……
So cheers to you Escapades and Happy birthday……… I am really sorry you are totally at my mercy!! And thank you all – friends, bloggers and readers for coming here and stopping for a while!!
