My own world

words on procrastination, commitments, self sufficiency and my writing plans

In the 6th edition of my series 100-weeks,100-blogs, I talk about procrastination, commitment to writing on a regular basis, along with a few words on my plans for writing and life.

In the past few days, I haven't read much, nor have I written on a regular basis. It's not that I didn't have time or was busy; in fact, it was the opposite. I had too much time. I just failed to structure that time.

It's not a new problem; I have been dealing, or rather suffering, from it since childhood. As long as I can remember, perhaps in class 3rd or 4th, on a warm evening, I told my mother I was done with my math sums for the day, with just a few left that I'd do the next day. To this, my mother said I should never keep my work pending for tomorrow . I did my sums that day, but it took me time to understand what she meant that evening.

I have always been an 11th-hour finisher for any job. Too much time for a job makes me lazy, and too little time makes me anxious. In both situations, I prefer overthinking instead of working.

But things are getting serious in my life, and this question keeps haunting me: "How long will this go on?"

I started this series to publish an essay every week, and I am writing this one on the last day of the week itself. Maybe I set goals that are beyond my reach or goals I'm not capable of achieving, and I end up with nothing in my hand.

I had planned to write this essay at the end of the year as a heroic piece about how I made sense of self-help and solved my problems of procrastination and laziness. At the New Year, I also made plans: I would read at least 30 books by the year-end, publish on multiple platforms, and even start writing fiction, and so on. Almost half of the year is done, and things haven’t gone as I wanted them to.

But as much as I would love to boast about my achievements on this newsletter – the struggles I overcame – I also want to be courageous enough to write about what's holding me back.

I used to be a self-help junkie. I knew I would need advice, and I never used to trust my gut for anything. Any decision I made, I used to get it validated from multiple sources: YouTube, friends, parents, sisters, and sometimes teachers.

I ran on the sugar rush of making an announcement and seeing appreciation in the eyes of those I shared it with. I went through the same emotion while writing the first blog of this series as well. Now, again, the cycle has repeated itself. Had I not made this public, I would have skipped this blog with an excuse like, "I'll publish two next week."

But making that announcement has held me accountable, and a few friends have been asking me since Friday about this week's blog. So, I have decided to take this a little further. I want to talk about plans for this blog, my writing, and a few points on how I would like to lead my life ahead.

This is me making some plans again, nothing new that you might haven't heard from anyone else before, so you can leave this piece if you want. See you next week.

For those who are still reading, let's move forward.

I started this newsletter as a step towards becoming a writer. I wanted to get better, piece after piece, and to have something to show, maybe 20 years later, to someone starting their writing journey, saying, "Look, this is how I used to write before, this is how I started."

I want to continue following this vision, try my hands on everything there is in writing, from non-fiction to fiction, from poetry to philosophy. The main incentive to writing on diverse topics and genre is that I will also have to read a lot. This is important to me because I have always assumed my knowledge of the world to be limited in comparison of people around me. Reading has helped me to at least sit among people better than me and to have something to say.

So, for the remaining 94 blogs and beyond, expect a lot of surprises. I will publish my processes and the results. I will publish fiction, philosophy, and maybe poetry, and explain how I am learning about them and how I am writing them. I will share my views on topics I find hard to understand and will try to explain them in simpler words.

As for my writing in general, I want to increase my overall writing volume. I have to use AI to cross-verify my grammar, spelling punctuation, and sometimes have to ask it to rewrite a sentence for me. I hate doing that. I would like to improve this as well. Since this series has pushed me to write few times a week at least, I am planning to have a daily blog too, on my everyday readings and learning, maybe by the end of June.

Apart from this, one thing I wish to create is my Hindi newsletter. I am rediscovering my relationship with Hindi literature. Hindi is the language in which I think. Even in the first draft of my pieces, I first write those sentences in Hindi, that I want to say, but I don't find the right English words for them at once, just as happened in this sentence. I wrote the last sentence in Hindi first, then translated it to English in the final draft. So, a newsletter in Hindi where I don't have to do a lot of translations seems like a comforting idea. I am not publishing it now because I have to catch up a lot on my Hindi literature reading, but it will come soon.

In a way, I want to build my own world, word by word.

My plans for life aren't any different either; I wish to follow the same vision in other aspects as well. I am aware that not many have the privilege to pursue their interests, and ending up unsatisfied and sad will be an act of disrespect to all those who have provided me this privilege.

And the portal to this world opens outside the shell of my own making: the shell of self-doubt and laziness. Sometimes, I do feel self-criticism is a coping mechanism for inaction. And when self-criticism meets inaction, it becomes a recipe for a resentful life.

Those who lack the courage will always find a philosophy to justify it - Albert Camus

I'll return to write that heroic piece at the end of this year. By then, I hope to have found answers to my current problems, and to be ready to ask new and better questions.

Writing lesson of the week : I was using the terms 'I used to' and ‘as well’ a lot without realizing, and also many words in my pieces ended with 'ly'. I have tried to limit both in this piece