Image by Denis Collette…!!! via Flickr
Douglas Adams: “I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.”
Me: I love them, too. I don’t live my life, however, in complete terror of their approaching steps. Besides I have made a commitment to post every other day. I don’t like to give readers an excuse to expel a sigh of relief on account of me being tongue-tied.
Not.
So here goes, my list of 25 things I owe Dee ,Chuvaness , Yatot , and Bingkee .
1. I was born in September.
2. In Oriental Mindoro during the decade when man first landed on the moon.
3. Don’t snicker. Don’t ask me my age. You’ll not get far. Plurk did and I promptly deleted my account.
4. No writing genes in the family as far as I know. Maybe I can include my departed father who wrote like a man possessed during the last years of his life – because he needed to wage war against failing memory.
5. He called it his autobiography – accounts of his courtship of my mother, early family life, ghosts, “aswang“, and his life as a guerrilla in World War 2.
6. He might have been a better blogger than I could have ever been. He had such an interesting life and had that gift with people. He was a natural
7. whereas I have to be shoved to get myself seen in social gatherings.
8. My father had a great influence in my reading habits. Our home then was like a periodical section of a good sized library.
9. I did not know I can write until my senior year in high school. I was made editor of the school paper because the brilliant students were into more high profile clubs like boy/girl scouting and speech and drama clubs. Only a handful of useless dorks were left. Writing is a great equalizer for lonely dorks, I soon found out.
10. Did not see a hint of panic or sense of hopelessness in my journalism adviser. She chose us without flinching – could have been her devoutness at work there.
11. So I wrote and thought myself a writer. It suited me just fine because I was an introvert.
12. Studied Communication Arts/Journalism in college because it had the least number of mathematics subjects.
13. Got involved again with the college paper. Worked my way up the rung – from junior writer in my freshman year to editor in my last year in college.
14. Met Ayn Rand. Graham Greene. Somerset Maugham. John le Carre. And went to bed with all of them. My only concession to promiscuity.
15. Bought once the humongous War and Peace and carried it around campus like a proper prick. Never got around to reading it though.
16. Lost it to a niece who filched it from me. Maybe she used it to intimidate her male admirers. Not sure.
17. But somebody in college read a whole collection of Graham Greene on my account. No, the ploy did not work.
18. I had other things in mind. Like being alone. And being in love with chocnuts, coffee, beer, and lately – blogging.
19. I find blogging less intimidating. Unlike writing, don’t you think so, too?
20. I’ve been keeping alive the dream that I can write. Blogging does that to my head.
21. Maybe you will call that copping out if you’re a purist. Maybe it is. It is a terrible thing to realize you’re not equal to your dream after all.
22. But I don’t let it bother me too much. The sooner I realize it the better. At least I’ll know when it’s come staring me in the face.
23. Hold it – here’s a thought. May be this holds the clue why I’m so guarded about my age. I’m getting old and yet I have nothing to show for it. Whoa – terrible thought, that.
24. And here’s another thing – I still smoke. It’s not death wish. Gosh, I intend to write/blog as long as I can.
25. Because I consider this blog my surrogate child. And though this child can be such a pain in the ass sometimes, I can deal with it. I will stay the course. Meredith of Grey’s Anatomy says it best: “That knowing is better than wondering, that waking is better than sleeping, and even the biggest failure, even the worst, beat the hell out of never trying.”
That’s all, folks. Unfortunately, I’m not passing this to anybody. Help yourself to it if you must.
elmot (3)
Phil (1)