sure. wait. what?

I’VE BEEN telling myself to write more often. Just write. Even if it’s terrible, even if it’s incoherent, even if there’s nothing interesting to write about. I remind myself to write with an audience in mind. This way I will at least try to make my thoughts readable. Never mind the correctness; we all make mistakes anyway. Just write.

But when do I write? I work eight hours a week, five times a day, and my boss has been compelling me to explore the town more often. Sometimes I go out with people, sometimes I watch movies in my room, and sometimes I trek along the coulees to keep my lungs and heart healthy (feelingera lang). I’ve also been reading a lot. Many kinds, from Terry Eagleton to Filipino short fiction to one cheesy romance that reminds me of my own voice — which isn’t really a compliment, unfortunately.

But the more I read and try to “live a life,” the less time I have for writing. By the time I open an empty document, I don’t see the point anymore. Why subject myself to something as taxing as writing?

Because really, doesn’t writing require effort? There’s no muscle memory to rely on, no template to fill with straightforward information. As I write this, I can hear the gears in my head constantly turning and churning to produce the right words in (hopefully) the right order. And somehow writing is so much harder when you have nothing specific to write about, ‘no?

But I do have writing ideas that are just, well, ideas. I have this post in mind, for example, about “distance and dispositions” in which I philosophize distance and spacetime and relate them to my being far from everyone I love. This, however, requires research and some bitch-ass rhetorical prowess, hence the delay.

And then there’s this post entitled “The Interrogative Mood,” another yet-to-be-written piece inspired by Padgett Powell’s book of the same title. All the sentences in his book are questions, as in every stop ends with a question mark.  I want to write something similar and see how far I could go if I limit myself to just the interrogative form. Interesting, isn’t it?

And I also want to write about this gooey YA that I’m reading. I want to understand why I’m not enjoying it and I want to persuade other people to agree with me. Now that I don’t write outside this blog anymore, I figured the reason I still write is so I could make sense of thoughts that otherwise don’t. And occasionally, I also write because I’m convinced that some things are just not up for debate. Like the Marcos corruption and the Martial Law atrocities — ugh, now I digress.

So I write this post because my unproductivity has been bothering me. I want to tick it off my list, and I also want to keep myself semi-accountable by writing about the posts that I plan to work on. There’s a huge chance that I may never get to write them at all, but who knows — maybe putting them out there might swing the odds to go in my favor. #

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The YouTube track above is Astrud Gilberto’s “Agua de Beber,” one of the songs I listen to when I read because I love me some non-intrusive, easy listening bossa nova music.

The featured image is a screenshot from the music video.