Heart Speaks Art

This is a story; a very important and significant part of my life. My journey of journaling. I have a very peculiar history with journaling; which is common in most of your cases as well. The first time I tried writing something that wasn’t a school project or notes, was in my 6th grade. I tried writing a story and failed instantly. I had no idea how to start or go about writing something.

Every time I sit down to write, I’d go completely blank.

The next time this happened was in my 8th grade; a lot of exciting and new things were happening in my life and I was in a place where my happiness and feelings could not be expressed. I started writing a journal, which now looks extremely stupid with all the silly comments I’d enter and all the funny drawings. This is something about my childhood that I love though. Later in my high school days, writing was important. Stories, letters, articles, reports; But it never got any easier. I used to sit through my English exam, my paper and head, both equally blank. But I thought that didn’t matter because let’s face it, I was not good at writing and I definitely didn’t have any inspiration.

But this changed a year later. Lockdown and the pandemic hit us all differently but yet the same in some way. We despised staying idle and stuck in life, time had stopped; it was a pause that we never expected would turn our lives around. But as much as I had considered this the worst thing to happen, the change enlightened me, helped me discover a part of me that I never thought existed. And I’m grateful that that happened.

I was done with high school and was hunting for colleges I wanted to go to, but ended up taking a gap year to explore more options; I prepared for various exams during this period but this got stressful after a point. That was when I resumed journaling; writing became my emotional release. However, I still wondered if writing was my passion, since I wrote my heart out only when I felt like it. I stuck to this though and kept writing and I came to realise that anything that I wrote with passion held a piece of my heart and it was satisfactory. I still remember the first article I wrote; it was about my mother, I wrote the piece lying in bed, crying and realising the pangs of separation.

The place I am at right now is unexplainable; a little bit of everything - struggles, happiness, love, doubts. This feeling is a feeling; one that cannot and doesn’t have to be put to words. I thought consistency and perseverance was the key to becoming good at what you do. While that stays true, compassion and love are equally important. Embrace anything you want to do with love and you’ll heal, grow and progress.

Every time I sit down to write, the words flow; with love, feelings and warmth. Every time I sit down to write, the sentences construct themselves; with love, feelings and warmth. Every time I sit down to write, the stories speak of emotions; with love, feelings and warmth.

Is writing easy for me? Definitely, writing is easy for me but it’s not water that flows out of a tap every time you open it. No art can be created that way. Words to a writer, colours to a painter, notes to a singer, pas to a dancer, lens to a photographer aren’t something they fool around with, it’s with passion and life that they create their pieces, in the hope they’ll come about to tell great stories that are beyond expression and explanation. Being a writer or a dancer, a singer or a photographer is easy; but being a creator isn’t.