You know that feeling when you enter a place for the first time after a considerable while of avoiding it, you become tentative and unsure why you're there again? Well that is how I am now. I'm sort of looking around, feeling the energy of the space, deciding whether I should turn back or face the inevitability and importance of the situation. Because somehow I know that writing again is not only inescapable but also necessary if I want to be grounded again. Not grounded in the sense of a kiwi finally admitting to herself that her species doesn't fly but grounded like a swallow conserving fuel for an impending full migration.

Oh, poo. This is how taking a break from writing does to someone--a resort to lame-ass metaphors. At this stage I don't really care. I am only grateful I am typing this at all.

One of the main reasons I decided to scrap blogging indefinitely at the start of 2010 was so that I could have real face-to-face conversations with other people, especially those whom I consider special or at least are not afraid or don't get easily bored with my company--which automatically make them special! Also, I felt that I was withdrawing too much into myself that thoughts were lumpy, not being sifted and mixed with other ingredients (yup, metaphors). Few things give me much pleasure as having my ideas scrutinized, affirmed or lambasted directly.

To a degree, I succeeded. I met a lot of friends for catch-up sessions, short trips and errand-bonding but I could not bring myself fully into the moment. In hindsight, maybe it was because I wouldn't dare put into the open things which I did not have a good understanding of. I listened of course, but only listening halts the promise of a pithy interaction leading to a full-blown discourse into certain conditions of mankind. Not to make it sound like socio-babble but if you look closely, topics of concern of most people in whatever walk of life mostly relate to human nature and how to best utilize or manage it for the sake of maintaining or altering the existing social fabric.

I write in order to think. And since I did not write, I thought haphazardly and felt uncertain about so many things. There's a kind of uncertainty that exists after you've exhausted all efforts to solve that uncertainty. Then, you are certain that you are uncertain. But there is also the other kind which is uncertainty because you know you haven't thought about it at all. Then you are uncertain whether certainty can be reached, which is the worst uncertainty of all. This had me living like a zombie, just doing the bare minimum to survive: work, spend, cultivate a skill set, amass huge amounts of information, maintain a civilized demeanor, repeat from the beginning.

Suffice it to say, my goal of truly interacting with others was not fully reached. My realization, which I have reached through this mini experiment, is that one cannot engage in real mutually enriching relationships with others without first continually intra-acting, and i'm inventing words here. This means habitually engaging oneself in truth-seeking exercises (writing, in my case) to build certain conclusions ready to be presented to and validated by other people, the operative word being certain. For others, this is all elementary. But my personal pedagogy has always been experiential. I just had to go through this myself.

And this, my invisible friends, is how I convince myself to start writing again.