Encrypted lives

She sat with her steaming cup of tea, waiting for the computer to power on. She logged into her blog and checked the visitor stats. The grimace showed it was somewhat to her satisfaction. Of course, she was never really content. This time she had a gap of 2 days from her last update in the short story series. The story was poised at a critical juncture. It could turn, rather it ought to, in order to stand out in the content that was spewing and churning across the internet. Maybe it would elicit a smile or a retort, a nodding agreement or dissent -reaching her in the form of a comment. Sometimes the pressing of the like button.

No, there was no way she could arrive at a number of her readers, a lot of them were one-time visitors, washed to her shores when the tumultuous wave of google search brought them seeking an assortment of specific,  inane and mundane stuff. Most were curious, and read a couple of pages, maybe searching for something moderately familiar or captivating. If something resonated, they came back - Oregon, Bhilwara, Kolhapur, Tokyo, Baden Wurttenberg, Pittsburgh, Latvia, Switzerland, Indonesia - IP addresses from all over. This was a good way to learn geography, she'd thought.

But she never wrote for them. SEO and keywords were a skill she respected but did not adhere to. She had started off with bits and pieces of her life. Hapazard, seemingly disordered. Parts that were difficult to live with then, but seemed pretty acceptable and even necessary once she had seen them through. Writing helped her vent too. She also visited others blogs. Most of them were like well-kept houses, color-co-ordinated and with lovely furnishings and artwork. Hers was constantly work-in-progress, like everything else about her. Her interactions so far had been pleasant. She carried her unobtrusive personality online as well. She was often tongue-tied, not to mention limited in perspective on her own blog, it seemed, reading the variety and depth of stuff that others thought and wrote about.

Today, she observed her fingers were not dancing on the keypad, often moving faster than her mind. She would have to stay them whilst she organised her thoughts into coherence. The last 2 days had been life-turning. Maybe she should not have started the series. She was not very creative or a keen observer of human nature. Did not her husband always tell her she walked with her eyes closed. Sniff! She had had to draw heavily from her own circle of family and friends to draw up the characters. She did not even spare herself. Fair, she was!

The conclusion for the series seemed tough. Tying all the loose ends together and still making it sound plausible. That is what she liked about writing stories. At least there, she was in control. She  believed in happy endings and pleasant closures. The characters that strived hard would come out successful and triumphant. She sighed as she looked at the ticking clock and the words on the screen. She had to finish what was started, despite the mind wandering off to her own deplorable situation . The One who was scripting her story, please make it come out good for her too, she prayed. Faith after all is universal.