I didn’t really have a plan in mind when I first thought of starting a blog.

Well, almost didn’t.

For about half a decade I have silently sulked in the clench of unfaltering procrastination, as I let days, months, and years go by soaked up in self-pity. Letting its grip grow stronger around me.

I have rationalized every setback, giving it more meaning than it deserved as I hid behind a shield of indolence and passivity.

The absence of a purpose had started to mess with my head and mock my reality.

Slowly at first, then all at once.

Sometimes we are smart enough to get past the guilt and blame it on life but most times, it catches up with us no matter the pace of our rise and falls from grace. For me, and I know you can tell, it was the fall.

I have lived inside my head for days on an end, believing in all of the thoughts that played hide and seek with my self-esteem.

People I knew looked uglier, meaner, with their self-serving motivations, coming at me with contrived smiles and empty conversations. The world somehow grew nastier even when it had always been the same.

I was convinced something was terribly wrong and I needed professional help because I couldn’t stop these thoughts from resurfacing so I began journaling. I journaled every day to silence the relentless inner monologue while considering other alternatives that could help me get through this self-sabotaging behavior.

Naturally, I failed. Incessantly. At journaling and at ‘not’ living inside my head. In equal proportions. While trying to drink each failed attempt away, deeply buried in shame and ignorance. I grew desperate, ready to try anything, and booked a slot in a silent meditation retreat in the Himalayas. It seemed like a reasonably unconventional idea when a friend had once mentioned it out of context. So I gave myself credit for the effort of experimentation.

Those ten days up in the mountains under extremely wet weather and minimalist living conditions wasn’t bliss but neither was it abhorring. I don’t think I was ever more in touch with myself but neither did it change the person that I am or have become in nearly the three decades of my life. But more on that later.

The effects that I felt following the retreat gradually faded like colors from an old photograph. Reality sank in once again as I became unable to distinguish between thoughts that were rooted in the present and stories that I carefully created in my head. This time around to keep myself from spiraling even downwards I took up a writing class. Believing, if writing was the only way then I might as well get better at it.

After about eight weeks, the writing too came to a stop and the thoughts crept back in. Regardless of what I did learn in all of my failed endeavors, what I didn’t learn was consistency. Apparently, consistency is all it took. Because unlike me, even the thoughts in my head were consistent.

So here’s another attempt at consistency. Another attempt at a presumable failure. Because if not now, then when?