How do I start? I was on Twitter and I saw @abe_ame replied to the tweet by the @theTAPIR on this “Ralph Breaks the Internet movie” review saying “when I grow  up, I want to be able to write as well as this dude.” I saw @theTAPIR’s tweet this afternoon and I even replied him that I was going to watch the movie later. But I didn’t pay attention who wrote the review. So I clicked it again just now. It is TheVisitorQ who is on a roll it seems, churning out post after post (in fact he wrote two posts on the 24th November) revisiting his old blog after six years away. Didn’t know you have a blog, TheVisitorQ!

One click led to another, after reading few posts and just amazed at how good he is at framing his words (what, anthropomorphic? I’ll just pretend I know what that means), here I am. Just shy a few days from my 36th birthday, trying to construct some sentences on my phone for my 1st blog post in here. And I think I finally figured it out. Those years I spent blogging furiously and why I could not continue to do so after social media came along.

One of it was due to the nature of my job. I was working in remote locations with limited access to internet connectivity so I could not write and post with ease. And I was on the move a lot, traveling to work sites. You see, blogging takes a lot of effort for me and to do a proper blog post I would be on my computer arranging sentences, formatting, transferring, searching and editing photos, videos and all that work. Truth to be told I used to have plenty of time just sitting in front of the computer with proper internet connection. The time when I wrote so many blog posts? It was during those many long office hours, less productive on my work but very productive on my blog.

But with Twitter and Facebook  you don’t have to write a lot. Twitter limited your tweet just to 140 characters back then and only recently changed it to 320 characters. (I don’t actually know the exact number but just from the top of my hand that is the figure.) Best of all, everything you can just do from your phone even with just bare minimum internet access. So slowly I just wrote less on my blog, more on Twitter and Facebook and it just became a habit after a while. And after keeping it half dead for many years, one year I just stopped renewing the domain and hosting. Died a slow, unevenful death like how most deaths are. Well, I think I was in some jungle so I couldn’t be bothered about it. And you know what? I got my old laptop repaired last few days. That laptop I bought just before I came to Indonesia for work. The screen cracked, I probably accidentally sat on it because I forgot I put in on my bed that one time and I didn’t send it for repair for many years. Anyway I got it repaired the other day, set it up in my room and then it hit me.

I have been doing all my internet browsing and online activities mostly on my phone. I only use my laptop for work, that is to type up some reports, doing some spreadsheets. Not actually having that arrangement purposefully all this while but that’s just how things fall in place. Routine. Habit. You stick to what is easier and simpler after a while. It feels damn weird to be back surfing on a bigger screen and I even tweeted that it’s been a while since I tweeted not from my pbone. Been a while since I listened to songs from my laptop.

So because of all these “reasons”, I just lost my mojo. I tried few times trying to get back to it and guess what, I spent time writing blog posts on my phone. It is not a pleasant thing to do. I can tell you that blogging from phone is damn tiring and in no time you would get carpal tunnel syndrome if you have it already. My thumb is hurting already from tapping (yes tapping not typing) so many words.

I need to go to sleep now, so I shall stop here for now.  Hopefully I can find my writing mojo again, by doing things differently and not repeating the same patterns like what written above. Let’s see if this blog will get updated more often in the future! I am also encouraged by few fellow old bloggers who suddenly are back writing again and I knew that after reading their Facebook posts and tweets. Ha!