I should probably just get over this push-and-pull of whether or not I should go back to blogging by coming up with something first draft-y to get it over with. Yesterday was my 39th birthday, which was as good a time as any to not start blogging again. I had seafood dumplings, sushi, and okonomiyaki delivered from Omakase, resisted freaking out at the passage of time, and went on to work at home because what else was there to do during a pandemic?

A Weird Six Years

I feel like the past six years have taught me more about who I am than the previous 33 years combined.*

* And by that I mean since things started getting off-kilter with my dad’s stage 4 diagnosis, my aunt’s death, my dad’s death two months after, the ensuing grief and life changes and resignation/freelancing (and now getting back to the 9-to-5 in the face of WFH chaos), my mystery mini-stroke in 2019 (and all the firsts that came after it), my bout with chicken pox during the 2019 holidays⁠—which only third graders should be getting at this point⁠—only to come back to a world where things are so bad people outside the disaster radius have largely forgotten fearing for the future in January when Taal started showing signs of activity because now, NOW, everything’s upside down.

Perhaps that’s a little unfair to say but sa totoo lang there were only very few objectively traumatic moments in my life. Ondoy comes to mind. Heartbreak comes to mind. But the middle-class life has taught me to be grateful for not worrying about food every day and to not ask for too much from the world because how dare you. So while my life had been eventful and overall pleasant, I also know to place it in the context of the world’s suffering.

My favorite motto and follow-up joke was telling people in their mid-20s several years back that the key to happiness is lowering your expectations. For instance, when someone passes by you on the street and they don’t randomly spit on you, be thankful because it could be worse (That was the joke and I swear it’s funnier in Tagalog + my face on it.).

But Hey I’ve Been Writing

The past six years, while heart-breaking, were also the most glorious years for my writing (pwera usog, I would like for there to be more, I’m not even published yet). In 2015 and the year after that, I applied to a writing workshop in California that was really out of my league on paper. But I got in on my second try, on full scholarship, and spent the bestest six weeks of my life doing nothing but writing scifi and talking about short stories and critiquing and learning and making new writer friends across the world.

That experience and the ensuing support and professionalism I’ve gained have changed the way I approach writing. I no longer wish I have written, a delusion I’ve held onto for years. I just write. I don’t wait for that crazy feeling in my stomach that tells me I must put this on paper. I just write.

I write on my phone, on my laptop, on a keyboard in the blind, on composition notebooks, on index cards and yellow pads and backs of whitepaper drafts. I write in the mornings, I write while watching the news, I write at night. I write as much as I can, I being the operative word. I write stories, novel chapters, I write essays, I write snippets of dialogue, I write theories, I write story ideas on an old-school Rolodex. I write grocery lists with commentaries. I write (and end) commuter rap songs, occasionally.

I have written three pages free-form in composition notebooks mostly every single day for years, a habit I continue to drop and pick up with only weeks in between. I take my fiction seriously now, joining forums where other writers treat fiction as a third job (second being parents or care-givers or heads of household), setting word count or page goals and self-imposed deadlines.

I’m not sure if the events of the past six years had done anything to spur that, and I’m sure there’s a metaphor in there somewhere, but I guess when one is faced with mortality, the fog shakes loose. Little things both don’t matter and matter now. Or I guess I stopped believing in “little” and started believing in “things that make me feel alive.” And yeah, yeah, writing is it.

And Writing

As a writer, reading other writers’ experiences and habits could have broken my heart instead of inspiring me, so I cannot stress enough the importance of knowing myself above all else. For every believer of “write every day” there’s an equally successful “write when you feel like it, then don’t sleep for weeks.” For every ardent “keep a routine” there’s a “grab every pocket of time and write.” For each “set large chunks of undistracted time” (mostly dudes, whether they have family or not, for some reason) there’s a “I’ve written my novel in the twenty-minute waiting times of everyday life.”

Eh, I don’t have cred yet to give out writing advice, to be honest, but I’m just saying, as a fellow artist-in-progress, this is what I’ve found.

By writing and writing truckloads of crap in the last 3-5 years, I’ve really gotten over that whole prohibitive feeling of preciousness I used to have about words. I also read a lot more now, because I’ve gotten over that misplaced arrogance that I don’t need to see what other writers are doing in order to write well.

Some famous poets can do that, apparently, but maybe they’re outliers. I just cannot see how a story can speak to a generation of readers without knowing where it stands in the grand pantheon of all known iterations of beginning-middle-end. Or maybe we just choose the kind of creator we want to be (and that’s fine, too).

And Writing

In the last six years, I’ve learned to wear the two hats of writing: the first-draft hat and the self-editor hat. No one told me they’re such different hats! No one told me that for every gorgeous published word were lines and lines of detours and word associations and strikethroughs and hair-pulling.

Now I wield the magic of revision with pride, even at work. I often get a kick out of overhauling first drafts and suprising stakeholders with a final that looks nowhere near its original version. A harmless but satisfying flex, if you will. Beginning to bring that into my fiction as well. (Not here on the blog, unfortunately, I need a breather.)

I need to publish the Tagalog novel I’m working on, and I’m not sure how the mechanics of that will change given the pandemic. Should I self-publish online? Which publishing houses do I still like enough to submit to now that Visprint’s gone? Should I just give the novel away for free to whoever wants to read it? Who will even want to read it?

The goal is really to just have people read them and let me know what they think. So who knows! Maybe you’ll find some of it in here and if things go well we’ll get a hard copy out of all that work.

BUT. The point is. I don’t think I’m the person you met in the beginning of this blog anymore. There are certain things I’m no longer afraid of, like saying what I mean, chasing after what I want, face-planting, reaching out to people when I get lonely, and admitting vulnerability, and all of that, in a strange way, had to do with both the Weird Six Years and all the thinking and writing that came out of the experience.

So, happy birthday to me. If you’re still a friend, I’m glad you stayed while you saw me change. If it’s your first time here, welcome, come watch me write things.

I have lots of opinions about my life here in the Philippines, the legacy of colonialism, the Filipino identity, the middle class, mental health, meditation, philosophy, writing, science fiction, tech, films, shows, and a few more about fountain pen inks. I’m close to an age I thought when I was younger would be the age where everything settles down, but gahd, I really should have whacked that noob in the face.

For better or worse, I’m nowhere near done.

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My next post will be where I talk about my transient ischemic attack, which happened at the peak of my health in 2019 and for which no physical reason had ever been found. If you’re so inclined, come listen to me tell it. Come by Wednesday nights?