Unshelved

 I grew up in a house without labels. 

You’d open the kitchen cabinet to pull out a jar with a Horlicks cap and a ‘sugar’ label, only to find flour in it. Board games were hardly arranged in stacks, just placed in the vicinity of a designated area. And the Dr. Suess lay next to the Atomic Habits in perfect irony of what the Cat in the Hat stood for. 

Growing up, I embraced this chaos. My love for writing translated to me writing plays, eventually finding my way to the stage. My love for expression bled into my love for dancing. My journey with classical dance led to a proclivity for perfectionism, which infiltrated every other aspect of my personality. Comparison might be the thief of joy, but perfectionism is the thief of creativity. 

But I had already begun labelling myself as the ‘type of person’ who was creative - the person who always thought out of the box, the one who’d express herself with different mediums, the one who’d always pushed the boundaries of what had been created before. And soon I hit a creative block, and stopped creating all together. Other than a couple of essays for birthdays and a mother’s day poem, I didn’t write for myself for three years. 

In an active effort to shed this self-label, two years ago, I decided to become the type of person who loved a challenge - the one who pushed herself mentally and physically. I started training my body to help me climb mountains, and I started training my mind to pick up new hobbies. I trained my personality to be open to a multitude of experiences and people with varied personalities. And my body was screaming with exhaustion at the end of it. But I loved every second of it.

And today I felt like I came to a standstill. I’m not the creative mind I used to be. I don’t have the energy I used to have. So where does that leave me? 

Someone once told me that when you feel like you’re at the end of everything you used to know, is when you start the discovery of the unknown.

Maybe I’m not the creative writer I used to be. Maybe I don’t have the energy I used to have. But maybe the goal this year is organisation and consistency - in the aspect I already find challenging. It’s showing up when I hit a creative block, it’s running when I’ve signed up for it, and it’s resting when my body whispers for it. And it’s doing those damn tax forms in time. 

So this blog is going to be akin to opening a box of milk powder, thinking it’s sugar, and finding out it’s salt instead. But atleast you know the salt will be there, and you can reach for it when you need it. 

I grew up in a house without labels. And I’m still searching for which shelf I belong to, but for now, I’ll live in the predictability of the lack of categorisation. 

Welcome to my consistently inconsistent blog.