...Of An Unnaturally Long Hiatus

When I returned from my flood relief duty-cum-South Punjab exploration trip, I was raring at the bit. I had spent an extraordinary month working in the field as well as another phenomenal 5 days exploring every nook and cranny of South Punjab. I had returned to Lahore tanned and tired, but loaded with photos and stories from my month-long adventure. While I was there, I had even plotted out how I was going to go about writing down the various highlights of my trip; which subjects were gonna get a stream-of-consciousness Jack Kerouac treatment and which would be delivered in a more verite manner (not that I'm adept at either of these).

The stories were accompanied by photos, literally tons of them, taken with my trusty cellphone camera. I was justifiably proud of them and desperately wanted to share them with whoever wanted to see them. These I tagged, edited and sorted in anticipation of publishing them on my blog. Everything was set for a marathon blogging session when suddenly my brain stopped working. I sat in front of the PC for hours upon hours, trying to write but failing to do so. Sometimes it was due to tiredness after a long day's work, sometimes the failure to find the mot juste and sometimes just plain godawful ennui.

The photos I managed to upload on my Facebook, so it hasn't been a total exercise in sloth, but this inability to write has puzzled,disappointed and ultimately depressed me. I've hit writer's (bloggers') block before but this has been a month of absolute, utter barrenness. If what Thomas Mann said is correct and "A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people., then I'm the Tolstoy of my age, because I've sweated hours and still not managed to write a single coherent sentence.

I hope to force myself to write from today onwards, even if it's at the rate of one paragraph a day. Here's to success in a grim struggle.