5 Years and 900 Days Later…

Today, I celebrate two very important milestones in my blogging journey.

Today marks 5 years since I created The Shubhster Diaries, as well as 900 days of blogging everyday. These are huge milestones that I had totally forgotten about and they came to me as a pleasant surprise on a day when I was re-evaluating my entire career as a writer.

5 years ago, on this day, I decided that I wanted a platform to voice my thoughts and have them reach out to people. And, for a while, I wasn’t very serious about it. I just wrote one or maybe two posts in a month and I just let them be. I thought this platform was something that would allow me to take my first steps towards being serious about my writing, and I was right back then, because 5 years later, I am right here with a much clearer vision of where I want to be and what I want from my writing.

And 900 days ago, I decided that I would make it a point to write something every single day on my blog. It has been 900 days of blogging everyday and I must say, blogging has been one of the more constant things in my life for a lot longer than most other things have been. I might not have been doing a lot of introspective writing here lately, but that is only because I have been taking some time off to figure things out. But knowing that I have somewhere to put my thoughts out there to people, and to know that there are more like me who can relate to the things I write here makes my journey a lot richer than I would have ever hoped for it to be.

Lately, I haven’t been in a headspace that has allowed me to be creative or productive, and it has greatly made me disappointed in myself. I have been left doubting my own abilities as a writer and whether I would be able to fulfil the dreams of a 13-year-old version of myself who dreamed of signing books under her name someday. But, I have enough reminders that I am a lot more than just this one bad phase that I have been going through. I do not know what tomorrow holds store for me, but I think I am capable enough to handle it.

Today, I have no advice for anyone who asks me how they should go about improving their own abilities as a writer, and I have nothing to say except, ‘Keep at it and don’t let the world bring you down’. It always feels like the problems are never going to end, but there is beauty in surrender. There is peace in knowing that  some problems aren’t our fault and that there is a lot that we don’t have any kind of power over. As long as we do our best, we must know that we will make it out of any number of storms sent our way as long as we want to.

We might never know whether our dreams hold the potential to be reality if we never convince ourselves to take the first step. I didn’t know who would be reading my blog when I first started it. I had no idea whatsoever how to operate one or what kind of content would go on here, but I took that step and I am so glad I did. Do I have a lot to improve? Absolutely. But it gives me hope that this isn’t one of the things that I gave up on. I will forever be grateful for the day 5 years ago when I decided to create this blog for myself.

Going forward, I will try to do better and address much bigger and more important topics on my blog, regardless of the response it might get from those who read it. I am grateful for the platform I have been given and I think that it is important that I use it for the purpose it was intended for when I first started blogging here. It might take me a while to go back to writing the way I once used to, but I know that I will do a lot better at this now that I have a reminder that there is always some good even under fifty layers of bad.

To everybody who is looking forward to take their first steps regarding anything at all, I urge you to have an open mind and to be ready to unlearn the internalized toxicity that we have been taught from a young age and learn to do and be better. I urge you to understand that the world is much bigger than any of us here, even if it looks deceptively small through the windows of social media. There is a lot that we are yet to know of and that we would possibly never know of if we never took the initiative to understand.

We can always learn to be better people. We have all made certain mistakes in the past. We cannot hope to be forgiven for all of them or be given the closure to move on from them. The least that any of us can do is to forgive ourselves for the mistakes made in the past and consciously strive to be better, while understanding that some things cannot be mended. If you are in a position where you can make yourself heard, and if you have been given the means to put your work out there in the world, I urge you to do it.

Of course, there is no such thing as being too late at something. You could start following your dreams well after the years society deems fit and still be able to make a name for yourself. It only matters whether you are willing or brave enough to take that first step.

How would you ever know if you don’t give yourself a chance?

5 years and 900 days later, I am still stumbling around and trying to chase my own dreams. But I can tell you that I am closer to it than I was yesterday, and that is all I need to know to understand that I am making progress even if it isn’t the monumental kind I hoped for.

Take the first step. Xx

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