Reflections of a restless eccentric

 My dad has been sick for one and a half years now. That amount of time has given me a sense of acceptance of the situation, no matter how horrifying the reality. On my many visits home in this span of time, I saw my Mom look more and more haggard due to the grueling regimen of her clinic, caregiving and household chores. I would despair seeing her, and worry more about her health too. But there was one presence in that house that always gave me some hope. My 93-year-old grandpa. Not that his life had been very pleasant. He had seen his fair share of deaths over the years - a wife, a son, a daughter, a sibling, most of his cousins and peers. He had grieved deeply over these, no doubt. Similarly, he had many many health woes - diabetes and high blood pressure for 40 years, heart problems for 50, cataracts in both eyes, loss of vision and hearing, multiple hospitalizations and surgeries. But there was this zest for life that he embodied that never ceased to dim even after all these o...

I seem to have been caught in the maze of life yet again. My writing average this month has been at an all time low and I'm trying to find out why. :P Interestingly enough, tomorrow happens to mark two years since I started writing on this blog. Time to reflect and analyze, I thought. In other words, I'm staring at the odds and ends that constitute my writing and questioning if they're good enough. If there's really any sense in continuing to do this. If I'm really getting better at writing. I happened to be reading an answer on Quora just this morning, one which went something like "What does it feel to suck at writing?". Weirdly, one of the answers happened to be from a writer I follow and look up to a great deal. Her answer scared me, because what she essentially said was this: "It doesn't feel like anything, because you wouldn't know that you suck. It is only in retrospect, when you have gotten much better, that you do realize that fact...