Back in college, we were asked to turn in an essay on what we dream of achieving. Because my pretension to becoming a writer then was already being severely limited by lack of focus and to a large extent by a paucity of ideas and creative inspiration, I settled for publishing. Ding. I proclaimed I’d be a big time publisher. A Filipino Charles Scribner in search of my own Ernest Hemingway incarnate.
My teacher gave me an A for that presumptuous essay.
God, however, gave me a D-. Of course, you know what usually happens to the best laid plans – God laughs at you and upends the drafting table. I know God might have finally approved of the plan, but my failure was largely because of my lack of focus and other failings. I had designed the blueprint myself. And so it had come to pass.
Instead of graduating from college, I applied for a job. I found one but I was underemployed as a quality inspector in a textile factory somewhere in Rizal. Of course, I went through pushing carts full of bobbins of yarns to spinners. I was fairly young, but it was backbreaking. An opening in the quality control staff later made my life easier. From peon I became a pencil pusher, consolidating inspection reports and doing other routine work you can do on auto-pilot. The greatest challenge to my creative aspirations was to cook up excuse letters for my co-workers who gallivanted from work. It’s that and how to squeeze my minimum wage so after I fed myself I’d still have some money for books.
Cut to present time. I’m managing a small computer retail store. At night I have been blogging. That’s publishing still, right? Well, what do you know. May be this is my second chance. With this publishing platform, I have the world for an audience. Of course, the audience is preoccupied elsewhere. Understandably so, I have not written anything for them to take notice.
It doesn’t daunt me a bit. Why should I expect the world to pay heed? I did my inquiries and I found out my best friends had yet to check up on my blog. None among my family members had visited me, too. Boo-hoo.
Maybe that’s for the best. That will give me enough elbow room on this blog. “Who do you think you are – mentioning in your blog your Ate R’s to-die-for recipe for carbonara. You perhaps think that trumps my exotic frog recipes?” Or something of this sort.
Even the household puppy named Ditton – of askal lineage (local variety dog) – reserves barking and raising an awful racket every time I sit down to blog. It doesn’t help that children carolers drive Ditton to a fit. If I skip blogging on some days, it can very well be because of him. Clearly, he’s not a cute, dainty little thing that blogging big time eventually bought. But he’s become a metaphor for everything that taunts me to quit. It’s just a blog after all. An excuse that will soon become a full treatise why one stops pursuing a dream, if I don’t pay attention to these things.
Nice thing though – it has been only 17 days of blogging. I should not let up and lose focus.
If only for the reason that this blog can keep me sane. That’s a big thing for me. Honest writing can make a person fully conscious of life’s journey, it’s challenges and triumphs and even losses. That’s a major help, whatever job one may have in this world.
At least I have here a tool to help me evolve as better person. By looking inward, by self-examination, and by seeing all this personal growth crystallized in writing. And if I am lucky through your companionship and conversations.
Your thoughts? Any dreams from earlier life you have rescued from the garbage bin? Are you working on it too?
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