WordPress recently reminded me that I started this blog in September of 2013, and I want to talk today about why I started this blog, for what purpose it continues to serve, and how I continue to push forward.
Three years ago, I was at the tail end of a spiraling relationship with someone I had broken up with a year prior but was still dating because of reasons I don’t fully understand. I was starting my third semester at my university, my first internship on a campaign, and I was doing more than I had ever done before.
I was also writing. I was between writing for Rude Girl Magazine and Videshi Magazine, but had been running a tumblr on feminist children’s media that I had recently shut down. I wanted some place where I could talk about writing, my successes and failures, and most importantly, I wanted to be myself online.
I’ve gotten a lot better at this recently, partially because I know myself better than I did when I was a teenager and partially because I am more comfortable with who I actually am, but I was not myself online. I was what I wanted to be. And here, I was able to be intelligent and hopefully nuanced in a way that reached people.
So when this blog started it was to document writing about writing. Then time went on, I got busy with school, and I kept on attempting to commit to a “blogging schedule.” The lack of accountability to myself to keep this going meant that school,work, and life inevitably got in the way. I also had several jobs in quick succession that I couldn’t talk about online, and because I felt I was so inextricably linked to what I was doing career wise, I felt like I had nothing to write about.
For most of 2015, I didn’t write anything. Not fiction, not here, nothing. Part of this was due to the fact that for 5 months of 2015, I was battling various medical ailments that drained so much of my energy I couldn’t do much. I was also, for most of 2015, writing for a publication called The Rainbow Hub. At my busiest, I was writing 5 articles a week, so whatever creative energy I had went there.
Because I wasn’t writing tons of fiction, I had to stop writing about writing, because I had nothing to say. I was super discouraged because my writing wasn’t going anywhere, and neither was my day job/career.
In the last few months, things have vastly improved in my life. A lot of the chaos in my life has stopped. I am working as part of a team that I really love. And I am writing again. I am writing fiction in short bursts, and I am writing here about stuff that makes me happy. It doesn’t all fit into a theme, but it works, and I am happy.
Which brings me to two things: One, I deleted a bunch of stuff off this blog that was super embarrassing, but I wish I had kept it up, because I think it would have been important to track my growth. And two…I won a short story contest.
A few months ago, I entered the Eco Fiction Solar Punk Short Story contest. I’m still a little in shock about the whole thing, and it has been surreal having friends and family tell me that they liked/enjoyed the story. So I am getting somewhere with my writing. And I am so grateful to be getting somewhere.
If you are interested in reading the story, it’s here.
Thank you for sticking with me, and thank you, as always, for reading.
-Mehek
Mehek Writes 