Where art thou my pen?

Lately, I am being traumatised by a queer kind of guilt conscience – of not being able to blog! My pile of journals stopped getting any taller and Dad no more worried about his latest diary (seen those SBI or LIC ones?) disappearing from his table without notice – ever since I got “introduced” to blogging. True, it could not give me the comfort of writing “just about anything” with as much honesty, and without a little chiselling here and there like my tucked-in-with-care journals would, but the facility to record things instantly (since me and my machine are almost inseparable) and a desire to “advertise” (now come on, isn’t that one of reasons you blog?) lured me away from the pen and paper to the keypad on lap.

I, however, miss making my “bold confessions”. For example, when I was in Class V, the last page of my diary read these small lists: of people I wish were dead (included my Dentist and my music teacher), of my crushes in that year (if you think I was too young for that, how about my first crush in KG II?), of dreams as queer as “I want to be a maid at my crush’s house” (influenced by Maine Pyar Kiya), “I want to have a twin sister” (cloning was unheard of back then), “I want to grow tresses like Baby Doll Alisha’s” (remember that audio cassette?) and what not!

I know many bloggers who considered their blogs as much a confession box as I did my diaries and pour their hearts out with as unrestrained honesty. To be that today, as a blogger, I would have to hammer off a lot of my Cancerian crabby shell, and could I or would I do that? Well, at least I have not, so far! This way, a lot of "me', goes ‘unworded’, unrecorded. But then again, I am beginning to reckon the capacity of the human mind – I remember the paranoia post my first break-up as explicitly as I do the storm of thoughts that muddled me the day I first met Don (my husband). You don't forget things if you want to remember them. That is to say, things that you remember very often, keep getting refreshed in your memory and there comes a time, when you just know them by heart. For example, you’ve repeated “Baa Baa Black sheep” so many times in your life that even if you don't chant it for the next 10 years, you will still be able to sing it to your kid. Now this hypothesis is purely deduced from my personal experience and observation and you are most welcome to contradict (and I’ll so love to defend). Which means, we may safely leave a few things unrecorded and not fear losing them somewhere “down the memory lane”, unless of course it is some natural calamity.

But feeling guilty just because I have not been “recording life” as regularly as I used to, still seems too queer a reason, especially in light of my aforesaid hypothesis. After much thought and afterthought, I painstakingly concluded - it must be what is called the “writer’s block” that is troubling me. Or maybe my profession leaves me so drained of words that I’m left with none for myself. Maybe I am too overwhelmed with my “brand new life” for words! Or is it that I’m losing myself and I do not want to confess? I wonder...I wonder.....