A cringe title, but it suits my current frustration. Frustration, this is what Gemini suggested for what I am feeling right now.
When I created this domain name for this blog-site, I set out to translate Tamil short stories into English, not because it’s the only meaningful writing I can ever attempt, not for non-Tamil people to read these and get a glimpse of the treasure we have, not for even a second pair of eye to read. It’s all just for myself, to feed my soul, to feel like I am doing something meaningful with my life. Okay, it could be a little bit for those reasons, but not the main motivator for why I set out to do this. First thing before I selected the first story to attempt translating, I went ahead and purchased this domain 😃
But I am unable to pursue this any further. I mean I am unable to start even the first story. Why? I have just moved in to a new job and it demands more time than usual; I have a pet to take care of; mine and my wife’s office schedules; my interest in music; my interest in reading; and so on and so forth. I am telling myself all these reasons to stop this momentarily. I even thought I will have to complete a degree in English literature before setting out for this task because I feel that I am not prepared. Of course I am not prepared but all these reasons are just a façade. The real reason is I tried to shortlist a story and I tried to translate the first two three sentences and I realized that I may have bitten more than I could chew; at least I have attempted to do so. Therefore I have come up with all these reasons to postpone my idea of translating books. Not only this, I do have valid explanations and reasons too as to why I could not do this. I got inspired by the new age translations which are not literal but literary translations; that is modern literature which connects with contemporary readers. Even though the original work could have been a few decades ago, I can never match the quality of these books and I am not trying to also.
The reason I wanted to do this is to keep myself engaged and also I do not want to be just a consumer. Consumer of content, books, ideas, etc., I want to create or contribute something by way of which I can improve myself and also keep myself busy. Too much of consumption is rotting my brain and I can literally feel that, but I do not have the life experiences to even translate some of the works or some of the characters of the books or some of the situations. The landscape that I read which I wish to translate, I have not lived there; I have just experienced it through these books but still I do not know if I am qualified enough to even attempt that so I am just at this point right now.
Currently I am thinking of going into a reading spree and to read books as much as possible for the next one year till my next birthday probably and see where that takes me. Maybe I may feel confident enough to attempt again but till then I do not want to keep this purchased domain idle. This is going to be my personal blog where I write articles like this which is not meaningful for anybody other than me, but still posting something in public gives me the accountability that I very much require and I do have few titles in my mind that I wish to write about. Let’s see.
And one more thing, I will not be using any AI bots to refine what I’m writing because it defeats the whole purpose of why I write. I already know that all AI Bots can do a better job than me in expressing what I feel and what I want to write about. But eventually I am doing this in order to improve myself and to have more coherent thoughts and therefore I will write only what I feel is right. Maybe I will use AI as a search tool and to generate an image for a cover of my articles or get some context or things like that, but never to rewrite or draft a whole article or a paragraph.
To infinity and Beyond – Buzz Lightyear
