Shall I Write?

I just watched Shall We Dance? and it was wonderful. I just realised tonight that I really love watching dance movies. Strictly Ballroom, Fame, Flashdance, Center Stage, Dirty Dancing, Chicago - man, I love watching them all. Strutting their stuff on the dance floor, in an uninhibited, passionate, intense and purposeful manner. You can't dance like that unless you really love it and give yourself wholeheartedly into it. And there's just something about watching people doing what they love and pouring their soul into it.

Shall We Dance? is a story about John, a man who is bored of his daily routine. Things seemed to have lost their flavour and even though he has it all - a steady job, a good wife and family - he still finds that happiness had eluded him somehow. Until one day, he saw a face that reflected all that was churning inside his heart. The face that haunted him belonged to a dance teacher and that was how he got introduced to a world of he never considered being a part of. The world of ballroom dancing.

At first, he wasn't sure if he was there because of the beautiful dance teacher or whether he really wanted to learn ballroom dancing. But he knew that whatever the cause was, it was something different from his daily grind. It was something that made him look forward to wake up from bed every morning, knowing that he was actually getting better in it with every practice session. He made new friends at the dance class, and we could see that in his own world, apart from his family, he did not have any other friends at all.

To cut the long story short, he realised that he did love to dance for its own sake, not for the dance teacher and not for anyone else. By day, he was a lawyer - helping clients prepare their last will and testament and putting their assets in order. By Wednesday night, he was a dancer - gliding across the dance floor, feeling marvellously alive and danced like nobody was looking.

I could so relate to John - holding the day job that I do because it pays the bills - and at night, pouring out my soul in the form of words. Words that have to be expressed if I were to have any sleep on most nights. I feel such relieve and such joy after I finished pouring out my soul, unedited, uninhibited. For years while I was growing up, it was the main way that I could express myself. I wrote many stories, had many pen pals and kept a diary.

Writing was my lifeline. And though the dream to be a writer has been squashed to death many many times, it just refuses to stay dead, you know? It keeps getting resurrected. It keeps hounding me. It's like a disease that has no vaccine. I call it a disease because I've had it for as long as I can remember and it always seems to lead me to seemingly dead ends.

When I was at Borders recently, I looked around me and thought to myself, "God, look at all these books. There are so many of them! Everything that needs to be written has already been written. What's left for me to write? Why would they want yet another book from a nameless author? What good can I contribute to an already vast pool of various amalgamated subjects that has been so skillfully handled?"

I keep telling myself, "Oh, what's the point? Give up already. Do something else more practical with your time."

But I can't help it. I just have to write. And it really doesn't matter if no one else wants to read what I write or if I'm highlighting something that has been written to death a thousand times before. Because I am not doing this for anyone. I'm doing this for my survival. It has become as important as breathing or eating is to me.

Like what dancing is to John, writing... makes me happy. And I suspect that's what I'll keep doing until the day I die.

Ok, now I shall start packing. Leaving tomorrow, woo-hoo!!! I've pre-programmed several posts to appear during the time I'm gone. Can't stop writing mar.