Why are you still writing though?
Writing always comes from a place of incompleteness, of feeling hopeless, inadequate, sad. Of trying to explain ourselves, to express our underlying emotions. Explains why we wrote better when we were younger, because we felt lost sometimes, we pent up so much unhappiness inside, we were trying to navigate the world on our own with out limited understanding, trying to make sense of our surroundings. Once you figured it all out, there's literally nothing much to write home about.
Adulting is all about learning that there's an SOP pretty much to everything, which makes your experiences felt too manufactured, disingenuous, mundane, that you no longer see it necessary to tell.
Keon got married late last year, and the first words I uttered to her seeing her in her white wedding gown "Keon, you look ridiculous!" and we laughed and she said "I know right?"
Once her pain went away, Keon doesn't write the same like she used to. Her best writing often comes from a place of hurt, and once the hurt is no longer there, it's always sunshine, and the mundane details of a life, all celebratory and joyous, worthy of countless sugary instagram captions.
Naja stopped writing altogether; it's easier to numb the pain with Netflix and chill, instead of writing it all down. Quite frankly, I miss Naja's writing.
But once you have money, it's easier to buy material and drown your sorrow in it. Why would I write to cure my sadness when I could buy a plane ticket to somewhere and forget it all? Or I could go out in my car, driving somewhere to unwind? We used to not have these options, because we were poor. Writing was our only escapism.
People often said that blogging is dead, but that is true perhaps for bloggers, who often use blogging as a social media, as opposed to those writers who use blogging as a means to write. Those who blogged for social engagement has moved on to instastory, where crafting visuals is their next means of sharing to their audience, and to facebook as well, after facebook changes their status settings where you can write almost infinite characters instead of writing it in a blog and post it on your profile.
Blogging for me is where I'm most comfortable with what I wanted to tell. I love how I can put everything where I want to put them, I love the feeling of not being judged, unlike on facebook and twitter. I love how there are no limits to the themes that you wanted to write, no matter how out of tune they are to the current trending topics, I love how it's archiving its history in an accessible way for your future self to rediscover and remember.
Writing now, I'm not sure if it's because I'm consumed by loneliness, or the MCO has given me new opportunity to re-learn everything in life, that things we used to think permanent is actually not. Things as rigid as our 9-to-5 office hour is actually a social construct, and with the imminent threat of the virus none of our preCOVID life seemed so solid anymore.
And also, the threat of our fleeting youth scares me still. I don't want to be 40 in 10 years from now, looking back to my previous self and wondering why my life was so empty this past decade? I want to remember how I am now, no matter how insignificant I might feel currently. My current 30 self is looking at my 20 year old self and wondered, why didn't I write that often when I had the chance? Now that memories had faded out, what do we have from our past?
But I digress. Coherence is not my strong suit, let alone when I'm writing at 4:40 am in the morning, few minutes before my sahur.
To those who will find this later, never stop thriving. Never stop doing what you love to do. After all, everything is temporary. COVID19 proved it. I love y'all XOXO
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