Thirteen Years of this Space! Happy Birthday Blog

It has been 13 years and over a decade that I have established this space for me and for myself. Back in 2008, I didn’t know that the world in general and my small world in particular will change this much. What an ordeal we have faced together, oh dear Blog! Looking back at an imaginative twenty year old me, created this space and named it “The Coffee House Revival.” This was and has been a room of my own, a space of my own, and something that I can say my own ~ my blog. It has allowed me to share, grow, and create a path for my PhD. Thank you, WordPress for existing and allowing women like me to excavate freedom. It still feels like a dream on what I have become today and how this blog created a path for me. I have grown with this blog and I know I owe to many people who read me, liked my blogposts, and encouraged me to write more. I wish I had done more, I wish I had kept on writing. But then life took many turns in this one decade and more. I decided to move through many jobs including getting a PhD. It feels very different to think of myself as Dr. Sweta Baniya who is now an academic, a researcher and has locked her poetic, imaginative, and dreamy self away. I wish to get back to it. I noticed that the last post I made on the blog’s birthday was three years ago, it felt like I had stopped celebrating the existence of this space in my life. I feel I have forgotten how much this space meant to me back then, and for many many years.

Picture of Tulips from Floral Library in DC

I do believe on this space and the path it created for me. I know I don’t post much or the posts are small enough, forgettable, and I barely write. Trust me when writing is a whole job, I feel like getting a break from it. Though in my head I do have so many things I want to write, share, and tell to the people and I know I have space to do so but I don’t know what stops me to do so. I guess I don’t have time is the most cliched excuse but I think to be honest, I think I have forgotten myself, my love for writing, expressing, and my desire to do so. The pain for that loss is unbearable to me but this pain comes as flashback on various moments. I do think, I want to go back and revive this space somehow and go back to various moments and memories in my life to make them alive. But I don’t want to make promise that I can’t keep. Once the semester starts then the pace of life changes quite a bit. That has been happening with me for past five years as I started my PhD journey and finished one and to start another again as a Professor now. It seems like past five years were a dream that I dreamt for long time. Well, don’t we dream and imagine good things more than bad things? But what is the value of good if there were no bad. In this mixed bag of life, the balance of good and bad things we face, suffer through, and finally emerge from maybe creates who we are.

Picture of lily leaves at Lily Pond in Chicago ~ sadly there were no lilies

The WordPress itself has changed quite a bit and the technology that continues to change around us. I feel privileged to have been engaged with technology for past decade and more and it has shown me so much. However, I agree that the fast pace of life, the importance and addiction to emails, the addiction to phones and this desire to know and be part of the whole has never been so stressful as before. Amid this, I still try to find myself, who am I, my voice through various expressions, research, writing, and maybe photographs that I took all the time on my phone. I think the allowances provided by various media to be able to share and express, and to be able to get a quick feedback and thumbs up, and replies are the ones that made the presence of the blog less endearing. But I remember how much I loved when people read and commented on my blogpost, it gave me great joy in my life, it made me feel seen, heard, and appreciated. Then I put that part on hold for many years. As you can see, I haven’t written for many many years or I have written very few posts that don’t really tell my story, experiences, and my voice that much.

For past year, we have lived in a global pandemic. We have lost so many many of friends, families, and loved ones. The way it started and the way it is now is completely different. Amid all this I think survival is the most important, safety is most important, and keeping all of the lost ones in our memories alive is most important. They didn’t deserve this~ no one deserved to die from this virus. I hope and wish so much that this will pass soon. And, it will pass soon!

Finally, I don’t know if I will be able to commit so much time to write~ but I really wish I will write more and keep on using this space for something good.

Happy Birthday, Coffee House!! Happy 13th anniversary!

Ten Years of Blogging~ Happy Birthday Blog

 

 

I just finished my preliminary exams for my Ph.D. today and wrote so much but I still have to say you Happy Birthday- Dear Blog!!

Thank you, dear blog…for being there and pushing me where I am today!

Thank you, dear readers and the community back home…whom I am indebted to for believing me that I can write!

Here, I am … I have been writing for the past ten years!

With love,

s

On your 9th Year ~Coffee House

Dear Coffee House,

This has been a quite journey! I can’t believe it has been 9 years that I have with you. As you and I both grow together~we have faced so many things, from pride and sense of achievement to emotional breakdown! This year, I am using Moomin Themed Birthday post. I love this cartoon by Tove Jansson  because they are deeply philosophical and teach us about life and how to be happy in the simple and small things. 

Having said that, each year I complain I can’t write, I am not being able to write or I just don’t have time to write! But you have existed in all these emotional tantrums of mine because you know how much passionate I am about writing, reading! 

I have devalue myself~ I say to people I don’t have any hobby, I can’t perform any DIY, sing, dance, paint, crochet, and so on~but I never tell that I can write! I never tell them and to myself that poetry flows in me, never tell anyone that I am creating a fiction in my head with the striking conversation that I am having with them! And, never acknowledge myself as a writer because I seek validity from outside and what I have never done is validate myself as a writer, as a poet! 

Happy Anniversary – Coffee House!

It feels like it was yesterday, I started something called blog and now it has already been Seven Years- For past Seven Years, Dear Blog you have been something my own like Woolf would say, “A Room of One’s Own”. Definitely a woman needs a room of her own actually men need it too. This blog has been my space- a room of my own, something that I own, something that I call mine – just mine. How easy it has been made by the technology? I would have scribbled everything to my small diary and locked it somewhere! But here in this space of my own, I not only scribble for the sake of scribbling but I also record my own country, society, me-myself – or let me put it this way- this space has been a way of recording a different history through a lens of a Nepali woman.  This is where I express the unexpressed feelings, the emotions and sometimes when my voice is not heard- this space becomes my outcry! And this is a space where I Excavate Freedom!

Five Complete Years – Happy Birthday Blog

Happy Birthday Coffee House ( Source: Google.com)

Had always a flair for writing, reading — It started with writing diary — short poems advocating Child Rights then under the teenagey -whims — the poems turned Romantic– Whoa! Then it turned out to be secret letters or or secret love poems of love written for the then crushes (which were hyper-romantic) only to be read in front of best buddies — it was 2000- onwards. I still remember a line “He will be in Tuxedo and I in red flowing gown/ He asks why are you so shy/ You are looking at me that’s why” . I feel funny now!

After school friends were left behind and I went to seek my own destiny — all alone — Diary writing became rigorous. I wrote a lot of pages — of just everything — poems, monologues, frustrations or even about the movies I watched or places I visit or about my Chinese classes. — Then after learning Chinese language — to keep my diary secret I began writing in Chinese — It was 2004-6. When I look back it now — I don’t understand my own Chinese writing 😦 — but I want to read what was such a big secret for me that time — I really want to get back to myself.

Internet was so fascinating– Many friends were flying abroad — Many senior cousins were already in USA — Email writing became a hobby — Also when I had to write Emails to Dad’s frens on “penpal.com” – Email writing became a hobby. MSN became more lovelier — when you could talk with your friends Hi5 was so fascinating –then there was a section which attracted me — Journal. Then when I read my friend’s journals — I was so tempted to write my own. This was 2007.

2008 – Gifted with me this blog – a space of my own – a room of one’s own (Like Virginia Woolf said)– It was a crazy moment- suddenly you were on the web — blog was as much as like a personal website — your poems, stories, monologues are not just limited to you diary — it was accessible to a large swathe of public. More fascinating was your blog was on google too 🙂 :). Blog became a passion, craziness for writing evolved. It was also because people started reading you, praising your writings and making comments.

Look who’s 4 today – It’s Coffee House :)

It’s your fourth birthday.. Coffee House

Aug 07

On the way to the fourth year is my dear Coffee House.

Feels like hugging this blog, this space, this room of my own and my everything.

What does blogging mean to me?

I would not have been grown this much, if it was not you my blog.

Writing, expressing the most saddest feelings and similarly the most happiest moments.

You have been part of life, part of my self development and setting my network.

You have been a space where I communicate, I meditate, I contemplate.

You have been recording my spontaneous and overflowing feelings.

You know how sensitive I am to things, people but it is you who taught me to handle it by expressing it uncensored.

You record my inner-self, my innermost part which many don’t know and sometimes things even I don’t know sprouts up.

You are there to support me to excavate my freedom, to support when I tremble and give me enormous courage to challenge things.

Without Blogging I can’t survive, without you my dearest Blog life is quite impossible.

Blogging has been a part of life now. I know- I am not that good writer, but this space has been my field where I sowed the seed of my writing and found out that it is writing something which I prefer to do, I feel comfortable and something I can’t live without.

My writing is in germinating phase- I know.

Yet A long way to go … like Robert Frost says .. “And miles to go before I sleep. And miles to go before I sleep”.

Wish you a very very happy happy birthday Coffee House.

Its your Birthday Blog :)

August 07

I am accessing you from a new country, so many things to share with you blog and few of your followers 🙂

 

You are three from today. Three year old. Now you are capable of speaking, walking, smiling, talking and everything. But still so many things are there for you to learn. You are still a kid dear blog.

 

Dear blog… I love you so much…so very much. You have been part of my life just as my soul. You are a second soul to me. It is because of you I have a space of mine, it is because of you I can express myself the way I want. You have been part in happiness, tears, anger, frustration, love, hate everything. You are not a child, you are my friend because with you everything is just share-able.

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Years pass without knowing on its own pace but it gives more and more memories.. for cherishing it forever…

P.S. I love you 🙂 🙂

 

A year…..

August 7…..2008….

A magical day….guess what I started blogging….this very day…today is the very day….just 200(9)…..8 has been replaced by 9…this is evidence that its been a year…posting things here in this “Coffee House”….just a mere blog….

Unaware…I was….with just a suggestion….I opened…this…without knowing the meaning of “blog”, without knowing to use internet  other than chatting….( hehe)….