No, I am not referring to the Chinese year. If you haven't noticed, my blog didn't get much love from me in 2017. It is however safe to assume, that I gave myself a lot of time, break, and much needed respite. Hibernation makes perfect sense to me now. My last post in Dec 2016 was merely 3 weeks into my cyber lent. I have been off line for close to a whole year now. The initial withdrawal, gradually weaned off into a distant longing and with time into an even more distant memory. What seemed impossible, became natural and even necessary given the fact that things over the last year, have gotten even more disconcerting than before, at least for me.
I can't say that I will be writing regularly. Anyone who has read this blog from it's inception, knows how I have struggled with a predictable schedule of publishing. That was when I was fresh with ideas and didn't feel the writer's block I have felt for the last year. I took aim at coming up with something to write several times this past year, even started a post or two but never got to finish it. It was hard to wake the bear from the hibernation, because it helped me stay in my own world and served a purpose that I would have never imagined prior to this year.
The ability to sit with my feelings, sit with them, live with them, keep them inside and let them be. When we feel happy, excited, upset or angry or disappointed, we all vent in our own ways. I used to write here. Mostly happy, apprehensive, and excited thoughts. Those are easier to share and more palatable for the audience. It's the feeling of disappointment, despair and disbelief, which poses a challenge in both suppression and expression, particularly when it pertains to a macro level disruption in the normalcy of life. Nonetheless, many a times it's important to learn to live with this feeling without any expression but to work towards an internal reset of your own limits.
This year has shown me that at times one of the best things you can do for yourself, is to disconnect from all that threatens the very core of everything you held dear for the life as you knew it. The constant stream of information, news bytes, the tweets (the darn tweets), headlines and chaos exists to blur the mind. At times, letting it all go dark and focus only inwards, is just what the doctor ordered. So not surprisingly, I practiced what I preached. Many of my patients did disconnect and did significantly better than they themselves expected.
However, disconnecting doesn't mean that you accept the disruption as a new normal and be complacent, nor does it mean that you don't care. But simply that may be you care so much that you can't productively continue to do your part unless you actually, actively refuse to engage in the disruption. Just because a bear is hibernating, doesn't mean he is unaware, weak and unambitious. Au contraire, he is just getting ready to face the jungle with a new purpose, power and well deserved introspection. So whether I come back to my perfect writing spot or not, I know that the time off was much needed and appropriately timed.
After all, author Ralph Ellison said,
"Hibernation is a covert preparation for a more overt action."
I can't say that I will be writing regularly. Anyone who has read this blog from it's inception, knows how I have struggled with a predictable schedule of publishing. That was when I was fresh with ideas and didn't feel the writer's block I have felt for the last year. I took aim at coming up with something to write several times this past year, even started a post or two but never got to finish it. It was hard to wake the bear from the hibernation, because it helped me stay in my own world and served a purpose that I would have never imagined prior to this year.
The ability to sit with my feelings, sit with them, live with them, keep them inside and let them be. When we feel happy, excited, upset or angry or disappointed, we all vent in our own ways. I used to write here. Mostly happy, apprehensive, and excited thoughts. Those are easier to share and more palatable for the audience. It's the feeling of disappointment, despair and disbelief, which poses a challenge in both suppression and expression, particularly when it pertains to a macro level disruption in the normalcy of life. Nonetheless, many a times it's important to learn to live with this feeling without any expression but to work towards an internal reset of your own limits.
This year has shown me that at times one of the best things you can do for yourself, is to disconnect from all that threatens the very core of everything you held dear for the life as you knew it. The constant stream of information, news bytes, the tweets (the darn tweets), headlines and chaos exists to blur the mind. At times, letting it all go dark and focus only inwards, is just what the doctor ordered. So not surprisingly, I practiced what I preached. Many of my patients did disconnect and did significantly better than they themselves expected.
However, disconnecting doesn't mean that you accept the disruption as a new normal and be complacent, nor does it mean that you don't care. But simply that may be you care so much that you can't productively continue to do your part unless you actually, actively refuse to engage in the disruption. Just because a bear is hibernating, doesn't mean he is unaware, weak and unambitious. Au contraire, he is just getting ready to face the jungle with a new purpose, power and well deserved introspection. So whether I come back to my perfect writing spot or not, I know that the time off was much needed and appropriately timed.
After all, author Ralph Ellison said,
"Hibernation is a covert preparation for a more overt action."
