Insomnia - among other things ...

People keep changing their minds.

First I thought I was the lazy one, not updating my blogs, thinking that there was really a good number of people who were reading them regularly and getting impatient at not finding a new post for quite a long time. Now I think its really not the case. Its been a month and I have been posting quite regularly... or so I think and look at them.. they tell me I am posting too quickly that they cannot catch up.... huh ??? what the hell is that supposed to mean ? :)

Anyways.. as the title suggests this post is probably going to be about the bad habit that I really want to get over. Not because I dont like it. Actually I do like staying up late. Just because I cannot motivate myself to go sleep at an earthly time. But also because this habit, this disease is probably going to cost me my life someday. And mind you, this isnt one of those self-pity statements. It really isnt. It is like one of those forecasts that the likes of Julius Caesar made once. It is true. The number of bad situations I have faced because of this really annoying and partly exhilarating ailment is getting bigger day by day and soon it will really be the reason of my extinction ....

Its been a while I have had it. I think it first started during college. Those days of Ringtone 33 and walks on the roads of DU at really late at night, the Gwyer Hall trips. But it really became quite regular during Masters. In the first year it was mostly just movies, tea, exams and by then I was actually living .. and trust me.. this is true.. about 50 feet from gwyer hall canteen (Jubillee that is) but in the second year it started with the GRE preps, then more exams, orkut acquaintances, applications and new "Idea"s. I didnt quite realise it till I went back home for the summer just before I left for the US. I really didnt sleep early. It was not because I wanted to stay awake but more so because some how my body clock wasnt just conditioning. And this I say because some people here attributed this sickness of mine as an extended jet lag. Well it was there from before...!! And if I am staying up by India's time right now, then was I staying up then anticipating and preparing myself for the US time then ? I dont think so !!

And after coming here it really has been persistent. So much so that even at my bro's place in Arizona I was not sleeping early. Well yes, I was tensed and had thousands of things in my mind then and except for the fact that I forced myself into doing nothing those few days I was really tiring myself out by worrying. And yet, I stayed awake.

Well, thats mostly what I had to say about insomnia, my insomnia, for now. Its about -12 degrees Celsius outside. That does NOT come from my desktop screen temperature application provided very thoughtfully by Hewlett-Packard but because I came back from outside. Just to see how cold it really was. Funny thing is you always feel colder in the night than in the day even if its the same or even lower temperature. Trust me the sunlight has nothing to do here.. I think its more like the understanding.. "all these people around me are also in it and are feeling the same cold waves and they are off to work or lunch or wherever they are going and maybe I should do so." In the night, the streets are deserted and you feel ... "ohh.. I am the only one alone in this cold...its really cold. I mean really cold. Brrr.. Okay maybe I should go in now.."and thats it. You feel colder.

I just lost the interest to type more so I will quickly end with this small observation.
This, has happened one too many times for me to not observe it more closely and I think now that I dont have a lot more to say I would fit it in right here.

There are a lot of times, during the day, like when I am working in the lab, or walking through semi-North Pole in a blizzard, or singing to the one songs that i have heard 13252412359450920th time, or maybe just listening to the echo of a statement that was just made by a friend/acquaintance/completestranger/enemy or cooking or... well ... basically almost at all odd (and even even) moments, that I suddenly think of a line that strikes to me as a potential opening statement of a meaningful blog. The line lingers for sometime, shows me how impressive it is in style and in the fact that it can subtly hint towards a big eruption of emotional content, and slowly revolved around me till the point of time I suddenly realise all I really have is just that line. With no content. Because that line, more often than not is a statement of fact. Something that I achieved or didnt or did both in different perspectives. Its perfect for an opening line. Intriguing. Probing the reader (the more inquisitive and thoughtful one to read) and allowing the passerby (the ocassionally interested O-lets-check-out-whats-happening-in-his-life one to read but take home only the first line as the most important line) to have a peek at what the blog might be offering.

The sad part is that only a few are members of the first group. A few others belong to the third group of people who read this blog in order to just say that they have read it. How that comes up is an ocassional scrap saying "hey its really cold out there isnt it" (referring to say a blog that started with - Its about -15 degrees outside) or "you must be having fun" (referring to "I have reached Arizona safely") or "blah blah blah blah" (referring to "bleh bleh bleh bleh"). There still exists an even fourth group who dont read at all. They click the link seeing it right there to be clicked. Get absolutely overawed by the enormous amount of stuff written there, realises that its going to take hours to read through all that text with their extremely slow reading capabilities, further realises its going to take days, probably weeks to understand the wordplay and the puns and then further re-realises its going to take ages and even lifetimes to make sense out of it and finally when they think they have realised enough for a day, they strike upon the final real-realisation that they will never ... read the blog. About 5-seconds is what it takes to reach this pre-concluded conclusion. Another 5 seconds to scroll through the scroll bar to see just in case a name that they know catches their eyesight, and when it doesnt, the mouse runs to the top right, hits the cross button and the flowchart leads them to the earlier group , but only this time they make random comments or questions.. like "hey.. hows it going ?" or "Do you remember about India" or "Have you forgotten us or me or etc.." only to lead to a discussion - (mostly saving my skin on my part because in same cases I really thought some of these people didnt care) which would ultimately lead them to saying "Yes I was reading your blog..." and then a lame statement similar to "You write so much!" or "You write well" or "It seems you are having fun". I am sure some of you who blog mostly about yourself and observations would be feeling the sameway sometimes :)

I shall not really waste a whole paragraph on the first group who really reads because they wouldnt want me to break the flow. They are reading remember. The second group are mostly the majorities. There is however a fifth group of people - the kind who while wandering across through the information highway, drifted, took a wrong turn or was shown the direction towards this way and somehow just came across my blog. Mind you, these people are not random. I have been one of them sometimes and I still do ocassionally keep clicking links just to land up on something interesting and I therefore happen to know how dreadfully tough it is to satisfy such wanderers. Because the top-right redcross sign is only a second away. And they (like me) are not there reading because they have nothing else to do but because they just landed there. The moment they realise that its a desert with no remote possibility of an oasis cropping up right there they will back up, revv their engine and puff goes the tab/window. But give them a couch to sit, a few magazines with words like "Have a seat. The manager/owner/author/realtor/whoeve(o)r will be right here" and soon enough you will have people whom you dont even know browsing ur blog. And thats where the importance of that one first line comes in.

Your first line thus needs to be short. Long enough to make sense but short enough to invariably force them to read the next line. And the next line should be long and interesting.

I smile as I type this because it seems I am giving a crash course on how to write a blog :) whereas more often than not I do not myself follow these so called tips/norms/rules.

Anyways, the sad part however remains the elusive ness of finding a suitable next line. For me that really is a problem. And by now, if you still remember what I wrote a few paras ago, you would know why. For me that next line makes a lot of difference. Its what holds me to the keyboard. If I dont myself like my fluidity how can I expect other people to.* (that asterisk is to remind me that I need clarify something about that statement) So a few paras ago I had said that I would be ending this blog soon since I didnt know what else to write. But somewhere down the line, writing the next para, the words kept forming and I realised the fluidity had just come back. It did take a few lines to reach that "next" line but like a pinball accelerator once I hit it the fingers kept flowing.

*This is to clarify that the earlier statement marked as such does not imply that I write this blog only to please people or that I manufacture this blog to cater to people's likes and dislikes. I am a selfish blogger like most bloggers but however I also do have a certain percentage of concern about tastes and attention spans of the readers. This I have learnt from my own experience of deciding not to read a book because it didnt appeal to me in the first few chapters. Some of those conclusions like the ones relating to some Doctor Who Novels, Some Rushdie novels and some others have not been quite right. But nonetheless most readers to judge whether or not to continue reading by the first few sentences and finally remark about the quality of the blog mostly on how well it was finished. This you will find as a footnote on any English Language Textbook - Make the opening and ending statement of your compositions interesting and fascinating but quite extraordinarily this time it is actually true what the Text book says :)

I had something else to write too other than this dilemma about never finding the elusive next line during the odd (and I repeat.. the even) hours of my day. That was about how I would classify my blog. But I guess that would be another day because this blog already has got longer than I had expected to be and more importantly longer than what the scroll bar would suggest as readable even to the interested but "Dont-have-much-time" reader.

Good night.