Tag: Writers Resources

Myself, Writing

Nightmares

Sanjay Sabarwal

failureSo had my first nightmare in a long time. It was surreal as it started in the middle. I am sure I was dreaming of something else, but I see a guy passing by, and for some reason. I call him a pussy. He keeps walking, but I know he is going to come back, and sure enough he does. I am on some stairs, and he begins walking up, and I begin blubbering that I was kidding, and didn’t mean to say what I did but like in dreams, suddenly there are 3 more people, and one grabs my hand, trying to force my wedding ring off while another grabs my watch, and then third has a razor blade. The old school kind that my father used to use when he shaved. And I start mumbling that I really didn’t mean it, but the razor keeps coming towards my right eye. The only one with a contact, and I don’t want to be blind. I don’t want to be squinting out of left eye which sees mostly blurs lately. I knew instinctively that they wanted the good eye, and as I woke up, there was an immediate fading idea that if only I had a gun to equalize the unfairness of the situation (there goes my liberal card).

The weird part is that I didn’t know any of the men well except for the first guy who suspiciously looked like the Reading Rainbow Gentleman Levar Burton (chucking anti-racist card as we speak).  Yes, I did try to figure out the dream, and I am pretty sure the entire dream was an allegory of my recent in ability to read, write or do anything workout related the past few weeks. Each day, I have this vague goal of writing and running, and while some days I am successful in writing for 20 minutes and exercising for 15, I know that’s not going to get it done if I want to be published or be in any sort of shape for the Spartan Beast which is fast approaching in September.

But, and this is a big but, I know I am doing something which is still infinitely better than the nothing I was doing before. So thanks to the Zen Habits, I practice self-compassion. I am giving myself a break even if they give me nightmares.

Myself, Writing

Fraud

Sanjay Sabarwal

I have this need to be read It’s why I have been writing since I was 16, and I often wonder what makes me want to share with others.  What makes me desire to hear the sentence “I read what you wrote” followed by “I liked/loved/laughed/cried/thought about what you wrote.”  I am open to criticism but I am scared of it as well. My biggest fear is not being liked but being ignored. As if I don’t exist. I write because it makes me feel as I exist. It is the only time that I am the uninterrupted. unadulterated me.

All my life. I have fought this nagging feeling of being a fraud, of feeling that I was meant for something different. The reality is that we are all a bunch of choices.  We are where we are either because of our own choices or others in our lives.  The others count only if your under 18 or just not willing or able to make your own choices. As a Punjabi, its easy to point the finger at my parents, but they didn’t force me to write, or go to UCLA or law school. Those were all my decisions so in a way I need to write to think out loud on paper. I have this need to inflict my opinion others. It’s perhaps the only time I feel as if intellectually I matter.

Yet even my writing is haphazard just like my feelings and thoughts. I have been unable to write something original in a long time. It’s as if I am afraid to really put myself out there or maybe just maybe I don’t have it in me. It is that last thought that drives me crazy. If I am not a writer, then what am I?  It’s the only label I have ever really wanted, and its the only that has eluded me now for over 2 decades.  I often the wonder if the feeling I am a fraud is actually who I am.  That perhaps in some way. my desire to be something other than what others think of me is what drives me?

I don’t know, and so I write even though I feel like a fraud.  IMG_1964

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Myself, Random, Writing

Prison

Sanjay Sabarwal
English: Writing «Shit_happens»
English: Writing «Shit_happens» (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Words escape me.  I am like the prison where I can’t hold them captive.  Instead, I am constantly on a state-wide hunt to be able to say something.  Yet, I know that’s not true exactly either. I hold one big prisoner: Fear.  And in the interrogation room, I question FAITH and BELIEF.  I don’t know if I have the actual ability to write more than a few pithy blog posts, and maybe by some luck, a short story.  So I sit here on this hard chair in my library surrounded by words of others, waiting for inspiration. But if I am being honest, maybe I am just praying for talent, or maybe I am asking someone out there to get me started.

Either way. I sit here yet again posting about not writing, but hey that’s considered writing, right?  What is it they say, if you want to write, write!  So here I am pushing out words like dry turds, hoping that at some point I can make real shit. OKDOGA, maybe not shit shit, but more like something that is more than just empty words.  Yet, I also know that’s not what the real battle is about.  Part of writing is being truthful to yourself, and others, but I am not ready to share what is inside me.  I am afraid. I am not ready.  So I sit here alone, wondering what is it that I want to do with myself. Now that’s a question, I have struggled with all my life. Even at 41, I still don’t know what to do. I don’t mean to suggest I am unemployed, but more that I am uninspired.  A lot of things intrigue me, but nothing has come forth that has taken me prisoner.  I am free in the worst way possible.  I want to be imprisoned, but nothing is holding me back.  Not yet anyway.  Here’s to hoping, that someday I will be free…

Writing

Time

Sanjay Sabarwal
Punjabi
Punjabi (Photo credit: John C Abell)

I have been meaning to write. I mean it. I really did.  If only somehow, I could have transcribed the words from my brain to the blog, life would be easy. No wait, on second thought.  That’s probably not a good idea.  I am coming to the end of a workday, and somehow it seemed fitting to close out the business hours with something on my personal to do list.  Something that I can say I am truly passionate about.  Before you say self-pity, I meant the new convictions in my life.

I recently turned 40, and let’s just say it hasn’t been easy to NOT feel sorry for myself.  I want to read more, work out more, write more, travel more, do all the things I have been promising myself now since I was 18.  Then it hits me. Why not start now?  What is really stopping me?  So here I go again (Sorry family and loved ones).  Writing, that is.  But there will be a change.  That much I promise you.  I am going back to my roots (no I am not going to write in Punjabi).  I will become a columnist. What will I write about, you ask? (at least,  I hope your asking)  The life around me, my new passions, things that piss me off.  Perhaps it will be much ado about nothing, but I will be writing, moving the fingers across the keyboard, keeping the writer in me on life support, because I know HE is dying.

So here goes to the new me.  Wish me luck!

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Myself, Preeti

Happiness and Thank You: A Blog Post

Sanjay Sabarwal
Lorsque paraît la beauté..
Image by ImAges ImprObables via Flickr

It’s easy to write when your sad, angry and full of hope, but harder for me to write when I am happy.  My high school teacher Marie Tollstrup used to say that if you look at most poetry and literature, it has traces of negative emotion with a happy ending merely to showcase the writer’s whimsy, yet today I feel obligated to note the love surrounding her and I, amongst our dear friends, family from abroad and in general.  Each day in the past week has been full of positive emotion, brimming with future possibility, and the reality that our time has finally come. This December will make it 5 years when I fell in love so deeply and truly with someone who I had known all my life that it still feels unreal that I am with someone so beautiful inside and out.  But I digress.  These past few days have made me realize how truly blessed and lucky I am to have the people I do in my life.  Looking at my past posts, I have spent an inordinate amount of time whining about the ones that truly do not matter, ignoring the ones that come around me at a drop of a hat, and I cannot help be thankful for being just good enough to have them in my life.  I do not know what I did to deserve them but dammit, I am going to make damn sure I keep them!

 

Thank you, thank you, and thank you.  I wish I was more eloquent but I cannot stop smiling, while soaking in these beautiful days and events with amazing friends and family.  THANK YOU!

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Myself, Writing

Energy: A Blog Post

Sanjay Sabarwal
Image representing Facebook as depicted in Cru...
Image via CrunchBase

I remember writing few months back where all my energy, ideas and focus melded into one need to get the story done.  I was smiling and truly enjoying the process, just living the dream of being a writer, knowing that what was being laid down was pretty good and I could do this.  I want that moment back, those blissful hours when it seemed becoming a writer full time was not a fantasy, that I was good enough dammit!  Yet lately, I seem to have found people who either don’t think much of my writing or dismiss it.  Worse, still I have others who manage to always feel bad about blogging or posting on Facebook even when I am supremely careful of not blogging names and keeping my status updates to a minimum.  I feel stifled and trapped into being a certain type of personality on social media as if I have to apologize for being open about my thoughts and feelings.  Sure, I have said too much sometimes and called out others when it was not my business to, and to that I can only apologize and call it a learning process, yet I feel trapped with the label of someone who talks too much.  It’s soul and creativity killing to know that my words are scrutinized to be either dismissed or confirm my status as a big mouth.

I want my words to have the energy they did when I wrote freely and got them out of being in my body, bottled up for so long.  That’s where I want to get to.  Let’s hope that the ones who are judging me know that they are killing me softly.

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