Tuesday 24 January 2012

Ageing Creatively

Unlike previous years on this blog when my musings on bygone months happened towards December, the last couple of years have been a bit of an anomaly. While I stopped blogging altogether after my PhD completion, and due to the pressures of sessional teaching in 2010, I resolved to rejuvenate this creative outlet (albeit for largely academic reasons) in 2011. In the first couple of weeks of 2012, I took it upon myself to read old blog posts and realised with some degree of surprise that it was not merely the content of my writing that had changed, but also the style and presentation. The new coloured background cannot compensate for the fact that, by and large, the creativity of my posts has been on a downward slide.

Perhaps this is reflection on my life too - more 'settled' now, at least intrinsically, and with less time and inclination to be an intellectual wanderer. However, this also feels like a bit of a loss, as though I cannot be silly and dramatic, and write freely in the third person about personal-political 'stuff' like dating across cultures any longer.

While the last year has been a gift in more ways than I can fully comprehend right now (both professionally and personally), I think I should make a bit more of an effort to use this blog as a creative outlet as much as an experimental intellectual space. Using pictures (as I did in previous years) is one way to accomplish this, but only when it feels natural. I also do wish I could write poetry again, however un-publishable, but perhaps that will also have to emerge in its own time. It could even be a new discourse for critiquing global media!