Shortcut To Happiness

No, this post is not a sermon on how to find happiness in your life. I am the last person to have any kind of clarity on the topic. The whole "find happiness in the smallest of things" is really not my type of logic anyways. This post is about the movie by the same name and how and why it has stayed with me even after all these years. 

So, have you seen the movie Shortcut to Happiness? If you haven't and you blog, you must watch it.

It is about this exceptionally gifted but small time writer (Alec Baldwin) who pledges his soul to the devil (Jennifer Love Hewitt) in exchange for fame and money and becomes one of the best-selling authors.

But slowly his writing suffers. His 2-3 best friends and genuine readers cannot read his "popular" books anymore because it lacks quality and they tell him so but he doesn't even have time to listen to them because he is so caught up with his new readers who are in millions now.

He has it all - readers, money, huge number of published books - everything he ever wanted and then he realizes that actually, he never really wanted any of this. All he ever wanted was a reader who responded to his writing and connected to his words. He was happier being an unpublished writer who wrote brilliant stuff whose real readers actually read him.

In the beginning of my blogging journey, way back in 2010, for one whole month or so, or longer than that perhaps, I caught myself obsessing over Alexa Rank, comments, number of readers, and number of followers, page views, so on and so forth. I even compared it with others. I sometimes returned comments and visits for the sake of it. And this is the shameful part, I wondered why some common readers don't read me but read others. I frequently doubted the quality of my blog, and asked repeatedly was my blog not nice. I worried that though I was nearing 2 years, I was still at 85 posts in 2012. I was caught up in this indivotes (votes that your post gets on a bloggers network called indiblogger), statistics, followers, widgets, and the world of other bloggers. I lost myself somewhere, bit by bit and I was so aware of it.

I had forgotten why I had actually started blogging. I had started blogging to quiet my mind. I was constantly in a monologue with myself and I had to find a way out of it - the constant chatter in my head. It was like I was always talking, even when there was no one else in the room or mostly then! Today, almost 7 years later, with a four year break in the blogging journey, it feels great to be in a space of contentment. Now that I am almost 134 posts old (nine on my travel blog and 125 here on this one), I have often gone back reading my older posts. They always bring a smile of joy. I surely find it amusing that there was a phase where I felt a particular way about a particular issue.

Interestingly, many of those emotions and opinions that I put forth in my earliest posts are still true today! Even after 7 years!  Or maybe, seven years is really not that long a time for a person to have a drastically different opinion on the same issue. Maybe, the number seven is a landmark number for married couples only, what with the itch and all the accompanying troubles. 

So, sometimes, I wonder, what would it be like, reading posts of 2010, say in 2050? Would I be ashamed? Not, I hope. 

Aakhir Kyun ?!?

I started blogging because I have this habit of talking incessantly. What’s weird about that you ask? Listen further. I talk incessantly to myself. All in the head. When I am alone. All by myself. I guess I got it from my father. He used to talk a lot too. But then that was because he was drunk most times!

Then why do I talk alone? Aakhir kyun? Psychological problem? Could be. I definitely think we so- called ‘normal’ people aren’t all that normal after all. The ones in mental asylums have fewer phobias/problems than we sane people do. Agree with Yogaraj Bhatt there. Remember “Manasare”? Uppi also said this much before him in “A” released ages back.

So, well … I keep talking in my head. On almost every conceivable subject on earth. If you could record my head, the recorder would coolly playback endless conversations. Long drawn monologues. Spirited, mind you! The conversations are never dull. Always forceful. When I am moved by something, the outpourings begin. Even though what moves me could be something as mundane as the lighter of my gas stove or as remote as Star Cruises or as abstract as Utopia.

Then, one day, when our T.V remote “died”, I once again started talking in my head. This time, however, I got up & put it down on paper. Word to word. Just as I was saying it in my head. No editing. Free flow of words. Thinking aloud. Putting pen to paper. Quite out of the blue.

And then I asked myself, “Can I publish this stupid, one- page crap, say in a newspaper/magazine or even a leaflet?” NAAAAH!!

Then it struck me. Why don’t I just blog it? Blogs do welcome all & sundry. You needn’t have a course in creative writing or be tech savvy or intellectual to be a blogger. If you are all or any of these, good for you! But then you don’t HAVE to be! All you have to be able to do is put pen to paper. Quite literally. And if you are passionate about things around you, it HELPS!

So that’s how I started blogging. No agenda. No creativity. No “writer in the making” business. Just plain “recordings of my head” stuff.

The best part is, it has actually helped ‘calm’ my restless mind. Is this how psychos feel when they talk to their shrink? If so, I am with you guys. After all, I am one too!!!