In my quest to not get existential

I failed.

Not the challenge, no! I am surprised I completed that with minimal difficulty.

But to not fill myself with dread when left alone with my thoughts and given the freedom to spill them out without structure, form or intent.

Though, in all seriousness, I kind of loved it.

Thank you, Judey for an exhilarating challenge, it's definitely cathartic to have written down something after a long time.

Well, here, we, go -

1. Ok, so I guess I am doing this.
2. Don’t get existential, don’t get existential, don’t get existential!
3. Wow, this is so much harder than I thought.
4. Franz Kafka is staring at me as I write (through a mural).
5. I am in a library by the way, I come here often to write.
6. Makes it so much harder with him staring, feels like he’s judging every word I type.
7. He’s just a bug, he’s just a bug - he can’t hurt me. If you’ve read ‘The Metamorphosis’, you know it. If not, I don’t know if I recommend it.
8. Mirrors are so fascinating.
9. They can show us wonderful things if we just stand still.
10. I saw Oppenheimer on Saturday in BFI 70mm IMAX, the way Cris Nolan intended us to watch it.
11. There was a small opening presentation by the staff where they asked us to applaud the projectionist and I thought that was so cute.
12. And oh by the way, it was a 4:15 AM showing.
13. The screen was jam packed. Seeing so many people queuing up to enter the screen made me tear up.
14. Films are so personal to me.
15. It’s the only form of art where you can have a subjective, individual experience with a very personal response like reading a novel but also, you get this empathetic response, which you share with the people around you, no other art form does that.
16. Maybe music at concerts? but again, cinema is a form of music too and music a form of storytelling.
17. Eat your Young by Hozier is playing in the background.
18. I love how people mistake this for a love song when it starts, but it’s actually such a scathing exploration of greed, power and the state of the world.
19. Snap out of it, Mesh, no need to ruin it for people.
20. How can I not mention my favourite lyric though - Skinning the children for a war drum, Putting food on the table selling bombs and guns, It’s quicker and easier to eat your young. WOW.
21. It’s a great film by the way, if you were wondering, Oppenheimer. Watch it in the theatres.
22. I’m watching Barbie tomorrow and my excitement is through the roof.
23. I am very young in my writing journey.
24. I only started writing a couple years ago and I see the stuff I wrote then and I cringe.
25. Not in a bad way - I see so many unnecessary line breaks, so many commas I would move, so many words that would be different.
26. But I think that’s beautiful.
27. I like to think of poems as trees, they grow when you’re not looking.
28. Writing them down is like taking a picture.
29. You come back tomorrow and they will have changed.
30. Sometimes I wonder - I will soon run out of ideas. I can only plagiarise my life so much.
31. Someday, I will catch up to all my experiences worth writing about.
32. What will I do then? It’s a scary thought.
33. Although I have recently been thinking about how memoirist writing is limiting and I need to write stuff that paints scenes around those experiences.
34. Works of writers of colour are often looked at from a lens of ethnography, a mere broadcasting of their ethnic experiences, to learn about their hardships and struggles, and I find that pressure difficult to navigate.
35. I love Toni Morrison’s claim though, I read it in an article recently, can’t remember where but it goes something like - ‘You are not your work’.
36. So I am trying to branch out of my writing to not be just my experience but rather a pursuit forward from experience.
37. Let’s see where that takes me.
38. Okay 11 mins to go, I need to pick up the pace.
39. Think of something funny, Mesh.
40. You can’t always be too gloomy.
41. It’s hard, the weather today is so typically grey.
42. Like show some creativity, London!
43. Grey light is flooding through these stained windows.
44. Does everyone else also get as affected by weather?
45. My day job is being a consultant for the aviation industry if you ever wondered.
46. I feel so conflicted everyday.
47. Aviation is a fascinating world, but it’s also not good for the environment.
48. But I am writing this 5000 miles away from the place I call home and it would not be possible without those damn flying objects.
49. I am working in the area focused on making it more sustainable though, so it gives me a bit of hope and peace of mind.
50. Number 50, let’s go!
51. Sometimes I wonder if it was all worth it though?
52. Moving abroad, I lost more than I gained and I live with this immense pressure of gaining more than I lost now.
53. I am struggling to write something for the Myth challenge.
54. I don’t consider myself very imaginative.
55. Imaginative stories don’t come to me easily, or even after thinking really hard.
56. I have an idea but I think it’s stupid, so I might not write it.
57. I am writing for the first chapter challenge though, but that’s equally hard.
58. I lack the endurance, its astounding how there are novel with more than 100 pages out there.
59. So many sentences starting with an I, the poet in me is scratching the inside of my brain.
60. I am ignoring him for now.
61. Ha, another one!
62. Vocal has been one of my best discoveries this year.
63. It started from the desire of wanting to create an online portfolio which I could use someday in the future.
64. But then I wasn’t using it properly. Ashely wrote a piece recently which highlights the exact journey I went through and the importance of reciprocity and community.
65. It all changed after that one comment from Mackenzie on my Father’s Footprint essay.
66. I am very proud of that essay and I think it’s severely under read - here’s the link.
67. I shamelessly plugged my essay (sorry, not sorry) - but the intention really is to highlight the comment which really changed how I use Vocal.
68. I understood how important it was to interact with other people’s work and how motivating that can be, because that’s what it did to me. (I am constantly amazed by how talented everyone here is)
69. I am a long sentence writer - it’s very evident from this.
70. But in a long winded way, thank you Mackenzie!
71. And everyone else who reads and comments on my poems, it really makes being vulnerable on the internet worth it. I promise I am getting better at it too, with every passing day.
72. I should call my mum tonight.
73. I miss her.
74. Most days.
75. I am reading Norwegian Wood by Murakami at the moment.
76. He’s a great writer and the book captures young people and their mind so accurately.
77. But his portrayal of women is disconcerting. He talks about them like they’re just tits on legs.
78. Not just in this book, but all the books I have read from him.
79. I get it, he’s writing from a perspective of a 19 y o student and maybe that’s how the student thinks of them.
80. But I’ve also seen an interview of him with Mieko Kawakami (an amazing author herself) where she called him out on this and asked him if it’s intentional.
81. He said “No”.
82. Separating art from the artist? I don’t know how to think about that?
83. What do you guys think about that - do we/can we/should we separate the art from the artist?
84. I’d highly recommend watching ‘Tar’ from last year on somewhat a similar topic where this theme is explored but never answered and I like it about that.
85. This got heavy real quick.
86. Think of a joke, quick.
87. Elon Musk.
88. What a joke he is.
89. 3 minutes left.
90. I think I can do this.
91. Desire is such a powerful thing.
92. Submitting to something completely incomprehensible with intense surety.
93. To feed desire is to water a seed, especially for another person.
94. Never know if it’ll birth roots or shoots, i.e. if it’ll be reciprocated.
95. How does one shake it off?
96. Maybe you don’t.
97. I wrote this line the other day and I think it stemmed from this thought - maybe you don’t shake it off because the most beautiful part of your body is one headed towards love?
98. And who doesn’t want to be beautiful.
99. Oh beauty - how everything’s that hunted is because it’s beautiful?
100. And we still risk ourselves for it, don’t we?
101. Sometimes ‘near’ is closer than ‘close’; don’t ask me why.
102. I am going to use that line in that future.
103. English is a funny language.
104. But it’s the only language I can write in and I am thankful for that.
105. And there goes the timer.

Oh wow, this was so much fun and way more productive than I thought it would be. It starts off rough, but by the time I reached 50, everything just spilled out of me. It also got my mind racing, so on my way to write more things.

Thanks again Judey! I am really glad that I joined Vocal at this exciting time where the value of community interaction is getting more and more noticed!

Thanks everyone for making it this far, I really appreciate it.

Until next time.