"Lame excuse. Real bloggers can blog on stone, wood, fire and even water".
- The ever-reliable KM.

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In some form or the other, most of us have remarked about how personal blogs are a form of navel-gazing.

Trying to figure out why you have one is just the extreme version of the sport (?).

Over these three years (fraaaaack!) I've come to understand why I'm doing so, and maybe understand why I'm doing it in the way I do. And some of them I'm even beginning to accept, even though I'm not sure of them.

Like why I don't blog spontaneously that often. Like why I don't spill frustrations and problems out here. Like how I'd rather people think I was lazy than correct them about why I'm not blogging.

Because that's my way of doing it.

Which only gives me more avenues to explore at leisure - why is that my way of doing it?

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However, there's this little niggling guilt that's always there. As if I owe something to the blog. To all of you. To myself, to justify all the time spent on the blog so far. To all the drafts I make up and am just too lazy to type out (note to self: look up speech-to-text software).

And what I think I owe is to do it properly, rather than haphazardly, or because I think I should. So maybe I might just take an extended break till I sort this out. Till I figure out how I want to blog. And whether I'm a blogger, or just have a blog (yes, this old chestnut again).

Although, maybe that's just how I do like to do it, in which case I shouldn't fight it. And I might continue to remain erratic.

Who knows?

Have a waffle.
With melted chocolate and cream, of course.

There are lines everywhere.

Some lines were laid down after a group of people decided that what they all agreed on made sense, and which have been slowly reinforced by each succeeding generation, making the lines a little bit deeper and a little bit wider, till they're no longer lines but a deep chasm that forces you most of the time to stay on the side you are on, the side where everybody else is and where everything's known and comfortable, till such a time as you finally draw together the crazed courage to give in to the need to prove that it is possible to cross unscathed; and you ready and you ready and you ready and then rush down the slope as fast as you can, hoping that your belief-fuelled momentum will put a giant hand on your ass and push you as you struggle up the other side, only to slowly realise that it's not going to happen, because what you thought was a chasm is really a pit, a giant trap to snare fools like you who try and fight for themselves, who believe that they can escape when so many others never could, who believe they should be allowed to do what they want and not what they're told, only to run (willingly, mind you) into this place and stand here like you do, right down in the deepest part of the shadows, realising you may never get to the place you wanted to...and never get back either; and all you are left with are the others who wander the underworld, unwanted deserters who wanted to explore new territories, your new family.

Some lines run away from where you stand, splitting up and rushing away from your singularity, so that you see no point in trying to find a way around, but instead walk across, and keep walking and walking till you realise the lines have managed to sneak around, and you remember that a circle is just a series of infinitely small lines, and that you've been lured into the centre of one, into something that you have no idea about and want less to do with, and that you can only always be either in or out, and that there is no other side.

Some lines are drawn by your mind, signposts in a special colour that only you can see and which only you understand the significance of, laid down so that you prevent yourself from becoming the person you nightmare that you can be, so that they become a permanent challenge, testing you all the time, daring, wheedling, tempting, a challenge that you sometimes fail, which you try and negate by crossing right back and telling yourself that it didn't matter because nobody saw you crossing the line anway and besides you're right where you started, but which the line never lets you forget, as it smiles and tempts to double-cross yourself again.

There are lines everywhere.
And they lie.