These days, words do not come out as easily as they used to. If I have to look back even a few years, I used to write every single day. May that be stupid silly quotes in journal, distraught thoughts given forms and things like that which I had no one to share with. I used to turn on my shitty laptop with a broken mouse pad, somehow maneuver through it to the Microsoft office, and hours would pass me by like a flash flood created by torrential rainwater in a narrow canyon. I would pour my heart out. Maybe my writing is comparable to only horse shit. Still, they would come out like a healthy poop after a good bowel movement in the morning. One more small big thing in my life that I think I have lost control over. Like this post that I am writing now. Even though I was supposed to write it last night. With that intention in my head, I got up from my bed at 4 am in the morning, turned my pc on, and then fell asleep on my chair.
As the years pass by, the definition of life for me is changing rapidly. Times are getting increasingly harder to navigate through. As so, the same can be said for every kind of relationship I have with others. Suddenly it feels like holding onto relationships is more brutal. My priorities have changed. So did everyone else's, people who kept me in their company. I think I did not look at it as hard as now before, but I find my priorities are highly contrasting with my friends and families. Feels like the direction of my life has chosen a different path at a crossroads than everyone else's. That, unfortunately, makes me feel lonely as fuck. It's not like loneliness was always a distant enemy of mine. In Fact, I had traversed the mazes of sanctified solitude for quite a long time throughout my life. But this, the maze I'm in now, is a whole different one. Its walls are shinier, cleaner but feel unknown, unlike before. The past, much simpler life I had is all lost now. And the one I have now, much of it I do not like anymore.
It has been a long time since I've been able to read in peace. I don't know how others do it, weave and integrate reading into their lives almost to the point of reading being a religious activity, and they are the faithful believers. There are two people I am acquainted with who read a staggering amount every single day. While I would read a book for weeks, they finish it in days. And it is not even like they have loads of time on their hands. Busy family men they are, still they do it all. But I can't. I pick up books, and my mind wanders off, chasing after my scattered mind with a stick. It is pitiful, really.
There was this old man whose shop I used to go to. A tea shop with free benches to sit on. Rusty old walls made of tin, thick glued paper and whatnot. Hands down, swear to god, he makes the best tea I have ever tasted in my life, only a few miles from my house. The street I take to that shop is as bad as you can imagine in a third world country. But the nature surrounding the road is pretty scenic, which alone would make up for the back pain resulting from a bike ride on that road. The tea was just a bonus. I used to go there every day. Then I stopped for a while, and somehow, years have gone by.
My room has south-facing windows. The sunlight never directly enters my room, so it is always bleak. And when the sky is all dull and sad, it perfectly complements my room. Usually, when it rained, I would sit beside my window with a cup full of something to drink and a book to read. They are now overshadowed by this tall building right beside my home. And that tiny thing that used to make me content in desperate times is gone. A silver lining is all that is, it is raining outside. And I'm writing this, sitting right beside my window, in that old chair, while the sky is all ash-like.