Get that first line out I tell myself. Once those first few words crawl their horizontal way across that new white screen, it will start to seem effortless. Unfortunately I can't say it's like riding a bicycle and that it will come back naturally. You see, I have never ridden a bike. So I don't know how that feels. All this time and inactivity now seems like a colossal waste. Then again, maybe not.

I have no idea why things turned out the way they did. But one thing's for sure - I am responsible. For everything that's transpired and taken place. It's all been me. And along the way, I learned what I believe is life's greatest lesson - Never try to live a life different from the one you really want. Never expect that if you do things long enough, they will fall into place or start making sense. That never happens. Eventually, you will not know how to go on and you will just stop. Like I did. I now feel like a passenger who took the wrong train and then got off midway. Now I'm waiting at the station. I'm not sure if I should hop on to another train, try a different route or just go back. I feel ill-equipped to make a decision, a choice, a display of my feelings. I feel ill-equipped to go on living.

All my life I never really had a plan. I never had any set goals or objectives. I just remember wanting to move....to move out of my parents' house, move out of college, move out of the country, move on to the next situation, relationship or fix. I just wanted to move on with life. I had certain ambitions but never really planned out ways and means to fulfill them, to achieve what I had my heart set on, to accomplish things that I could look back on in a tangible sense that would would somehow make them seem truer. I figured that I would get what I wanted just because I had my heart set on them. All I had to do was get from one day to the next. So an agenda I had none, and definitely no time lines. But I do recall there was a certain way I had hoped my life would be. Needless to add, I didn't let any of it happen.

I took the much trodden road (not by me, but by the world at large) thinking that it would somehow lead me to where I truly belong. I often think about this line from Alice in Wonderland that struck a chord - When you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there. Yet, romantic as the notion may sound, it's not always true.

Which brings me back to my present position. Exactly a year ago I fulfilled a long desired wish to go to Sikkim, the beautiful mountain state. A few days before I embarked on the journey I thought to myself, this trip is going to change my life. And it did. I'm not going to write about the experience of being in Sikkim and Darjeeling for that matter, and what changed me. That's a given.

And so I returned to a state of complete and utter shutdown. I haven't been able to write, work, or feel. I decided I would not do anything new or even the tried and tested unless I wanted to or felt compelled to. I'm still waiting. I don't know how long this is going to continue. The wrong train, stuck at the station metaphor describes it best I guess.

But yesterday I started writing this blog post. And this morning I drew a sketch of the wooden man on my desk. And later I picked up Sartre's Les Mots and started reading again. One thing stays the same. James Blunt's Back to the Bedlam is the only music I have been voluntarily listening to these last few months. And now as I wind up this post, Wisemen continues to stream out of my somewhat weary laptop. Maybe it says a lot about my state of mental being, or maybe it points to my laziness when it comes to changing the playlist on my Winamp.

Your guess is as good as mine.