Where is my joie de vivre?

Some of my favorite books have great starting lines. I always imagine the author slumped over their notebook, a dot of ink placed carefully on the edge, about to be stretched into beauty. I imagine them agonising over every sentence and every word, wondering if they can make it grand and yet clever enough to tie it to the entire coming text. I wonder if it pains or excites them, and if the world has lost some masterpieces or skillful work because of the seemingly small challenge of the first sentence. 

I envy these writers, these thought architects, their ability to build from imagination, from nothing. Lately I feel like bursting into a song, a poem or, an entire novella. This chirpy sentiment isn't driven by great tidings but rather a drive, an innate one, to produce and to create. My life seems to have taken a grey lull and it has forced me to craft meaning. 

Meaning, my dear Neha, -I tell myself - isn't found but worked hard at.  I seem inadequate to be reaching around for meaning. That is to be left to the giants, the thinkers and the philosophers, a man like Camus or someone with rare insights like Achebe. I don't feel well read or well travelled, I am worn out in all the wrong ways and my sorrow is not the empowering kind. I have spent a lot of my years and my career trying to expound the words that I believe do not carry lesser weight or some voices are meant to be less loud. Every time I sit down to create I am burdened by the need to write for a reader ever demanding, ever unforgiving and ruthless in their critique. I am jostled by this rambunctious crowd to create nothing short of a pièce de résistance each time I write.  My active imagination, the same that fuels writers to twist simple words into monumental ideas preys on me –a reader skimming the first few lines and offering a scoff. Ah the joys of writing. 

As Margaret Atwood with her dark charm says, " The only way you can write [the truth] is to assume that what you set down will never be read". I trust these words never to see the light of day and in this twisted logic, I take comfort. Most of life plays out very similarly. You construct your play with its own rules and set the proverbial stage yourself and then, you dance. This is however precipitated on the willingness to take this step, "an expression of the seriousness of one's intent" if you may. 

What I find utterly amusing about this is my inability to detach my life from my writing. The only subject I know very intimately is myself and my life is yet to be lived fully and colourfully. Over the course of 5 odd years, I have left behind trying to love my life and rather focused on just finishing it. I don't look forward to tomorrow or try to remember yesterday. I am not living in the present but rather a limbo, a place where time is not linear but stretches infinitely outside my grasp. To the people close to me, I want to hold their shoulders and shake them. I want to yell into their faces about how everything seems to be floating and frozen and I want them to understand me. It is hard to detach this from my writing and over many more words that are to follow, this raw sentiment will creep out. 

If you have managed thus far, dear reader, through this trough of insipid nonsense and rambling – you really ought to stay.