Its been a busy few years since I decided to switch careers and become a full-time researcher, and blogging has fallen by the wayside. It didn’t stop suddenly. It petered away, as I adapted my writing style to academic papers, policy briefs and newspaper op-eds. Writing became an act of deliberation and incredible effort, and sitting in front of my laptop shooting the breeze on my blog seemed frivolous in comparison. But I have deeply missed that habit of spontaneous writing . I have also realized it was my way of arguing with myself, in a semi-public space. These arguments and conversations with myself have helped me vent, clear cobwebs, and articulate difficult positions. They have helped me describe and communicate my feelings and my experiences. And when some people have found these valuable, I have felt useful too.

These small instances of validation, even censure, shaped my thinking deeply and I have made the mistake of undervaluing this. The past few weeks, I have made more than one attempt to restart my blog, but found myself feeling like a rookie. Do I have something interesting to say? Am I in the mood to write? Creeping self-doubt, questions that should never have mattered, hung in the air and I paid heed, switching windows to something else that I regarded more ‘useful’, more important.

But this morning during a rather tough yoga class, as my muscles protested and I struggled to breathe, something amazing happened. Images of all the places I have traveled to in the past few years began to flood my mind’s eye. Not the landmarks, but the obscure places. A fountain in Paris, a tram stop in Amsterdam, a grubby street full of graffiti in Cuenca and the azure blue skies of Leh with white wispy clouds. I was passively watching these, with a sense of calm and of immense gratitude. I had stumbled on the calm that has eluded me for several months now. As I completed my class, I resolved to re-instate habits that make me happy. Starting with this blog.

I resolve to care less about what others will think when they read this and to write nevertheless. I resolve to persevere at it, reinstating it to the habit it used to be. There is so much I want to say everyday. Social media, which replaced my blog in the venting department, is not the space for rumination and rambling. It is a click-through space. This is my space and my comfort zone, and here I shall remain and ramble….