Celebrating the wasting of time - two hundred and counting..
This if for Iana, who said "Have no idea why i waited so long to read your blog...great stuff! I feel good about still being here because people like you, "still deh hay" and for Samantha who said that there is "real good stuff to be found here".
This is the 200th post on the blog. A year ago , I wrote on the 100th anniversary that All work should be God's work.., and that the intent of writing should be to try to lift conversations and open up some space for dialogue and also try to add Guyanese voices to the blogosphere.
There are some great writers in Guyana, but they are busy and I wish that they would also find a way to write their own blogs and to own them. After reading Arshilata , I mourned that the Guyana Prize winners again seemed to be mostly no longer living in Guyana. I look forward to a time when writers who live in Guyana would be publishing in Guyana. We cannot forget how people like Edgar Mittleholzer and JW Chinapen published their first works in Berbice (not Georgetown).
This year, I had to write up on some other work and the resulting article Chantilly Lace was published online at sx salon This was an experience for me because I learned about editing and ways of improving what I am writing. I still have to apply that new found knowledge.
This blog has no editors. As a result, the enthusiasm and the energy create pieces with many typos, half sentences and grammatical errors, but I post anyway.
A woman asked me who do I write for, why would people want to come back.
I have come to the realisation that I am really writing for no one - that these ramblings are like me standing on the seawall shouting out in the wind. Or like the Jordanites at the market on Saturday.. speaking out - people pass, some hear, some do not hear and some might drop some money for them. I have no fantasies of making the money from the writing because then it will become a chore.
This blog is an obsession. One day I had three posts when I should have been doing other work.. and other times a week passes without any posts as I agonise over what to write, what to write.
I am sucker for the attention.. waiting to see if there will be any comments or so and looking at the stats to see how many people have read each post. The average is about 20 or so - clicks maybe from spammers. I deliberately use sexy keywords and the search strings are hilarious.
The things which I think are important.. are often not popular. One kind friend pointed out that this letter which was published in Stabroek News last week, that it only had five comments and that people are jokers since he felt the issue was important. I spent a whole week trying to write what I thought was going to be a masterpiece, but... like many masterpieces, they are for the author/creator and not for anyone else.
There are things which I want to write about, but I have not found the language. Like the beauty queens who feel empowered by events which discriminate against those whose bodies do not fit the racist and sexist criteria , or discriminate against those who might decide to show their naked bodies.
I wanted to write something about alcohol .. about singing Ramayana at a wedding house where the (illegal) bar was in the corner.. and wondering whether since Ram and Rum are so integrated for many, that perhaps I am really the mad person at undoing what has become a core part of the Hindu/Indian pscyhe in Guyana. I want to write about shaking hands with the man who is the head of the largest narcotic enterprise - the legal one that is - in Guyana .
I drafted things about working 'green'.. and thought of being smug that since I work from home, my carbon foot print is probably lower since I have little or no clothes to wash; no ironing; no air conditioning (or fan); and I insist on electronic documents rather than paper documents.
I want to write about the short lived experiments at mobilising people to do things. I should write about the minibus driver who told me that he makes sure he takes off the cuss music when elderly or children are in the bus (and he older than me)
These two hundred posts have taken time, which has passed and which could probably have been spent doing other things which are more productive. Some people have said that they will not write because they do not have the time. I do not write this blog because I have the time .
I waste the time because there is this urge, this desperate need to say things which I think need to be said at the time, and which I might regret later. And I hope that those who could really write, who do not have the time, that they will also start littering the blogosphere about their own experiences from Guyana.
This is the 200th post on the blog. A year ago , I wrote on the 100th anniversary that All work should be God's work.., and that the intent of writing should be to try to lift conversations and open up some space for dialogue and also try to add Guyanese voices to the blogosphere.
There are some great writers in Guyana, but they are busy and I wish that they would also find a way to write their own blogs and to own them. After reading Arshilata , I mourned that the Guyana Prize winners again seemed to be mostly no longer living in Guyana. I look forward to a time when writers who live in Guyana would be publishing in Guyana. We cannot forget how people like Edgar Mittleholzer and JW Chinapen published their first works in Berbice (not Georgetown).
This year, I had to write up on some other work and the resulting article Chantilly Lace was published online at sx salon This was an experience for me because I learned about editing and ways of improving what I am writing. I still have to apply that new found knowledge.
This blog has no editors. As a result, the enthusiasm and the energy create pieces with many typos, half sentences and grammatical errors, but I post anyway.
A woman asked me who do I write for, why would people want to come back.
I have come to the realisation that I am really writing for no one - that these ramblings are like me standing on the seawall shouting out in the wind. Or like the Jordanites at the market on Saturday.. speaking out - people pass, some hear, some do not hear and some might drop some money for them. I have no fantasies of making the money from the writing because then it will become a chore.
This blog is an obsession. One day I had three posts when I should have been doing other work.. and other times a week passes without any posts as I agonise over what to write, what to write.
I am sucker for the attention.. waiting to see if there will be any comments or so and looking at the stats to see how many people have read each post. The average is about 20 or so - clicks maybe from spammers. I deliberately use sexy keywords and the search strings are hilarious.
The things which I think are important.. are often not popular. One kind friend pointed out that this letter which was published in Stabroek News last week, that it only had five comments and that people are jokers since he felt the issue was important. I spent a whole week trying to write what I thought was going to be a masterpiece, but... like many masterpieces, they are for the author/creator and not for anyone else.
There are things which I want to write about, but I have not found the language. Like the beauty queens who feel empowered by events which discriminate against those whose bodies do not fit the racist and sexist criteria , or discriminate against those who might decide to show their naked bodies.
I wanted to write something about alcohol .. about singing Ramayana at a wedding house where the (illegal) bar was in the corner.. and wondering whether since Ram and Rum are so integrated for many, that perhaps I am really the mad person at undoing what has become a core part of the Hindu/Indian pscyhe in Guyana. I want to write about shaking hands with the man who is the head of the largest narcotic enterprise - the legal one that is - in Guyana .
I drafted things about working 'green'.. and thought of being smug that since I work from home, my carbon foot print is probably lower since I have little or no clothes to wash; no ironing; no air conditioning (or fan); and I insist on electronic documents rather than paper documents.
I want to write about the short lived experiments at mobilising people to do things. I should write about the minibus driver who told me that he makes sure he takes off the cuss music when elderly or children are in the bus (and he older than me)
These two hundred posts have taken time, which has passed and which could probably have been spent doing other things which are more productive. Some people have said that they will not write because they do not have the time. I do not write this blog because I have the time .
I waste the time because there is this urge, this desperate need to say things which I think need to be said at the time, and which I might regret later. And I hope that those who could really write, who do not have the time, that they will also start littering the blogosphere about their own experiences from Guyana.
Vidya...I admit to an unhealthy preoccupation with 'time' and equally, to a failure of not blogging because I was being paid to do it and writing just for the love of it had become a chore I opted out of. I'll stop making promises about blogging and just send you the link when I'm up and running. Good piece and congrats on tbe big 200!
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