I envy some of my former writer friends. They have the capacity—some of them even have the time—to write continuously. Now, this may come in as a shock for most of you who’ve been following my blogging history throughout Tabulas, that short stint on Wordpress, and finally, my multiple Blogger accounts, but for the record, for the past two years, I haven’t even had the chance to sit myself down and put a decent new word on any of my short stories.
Now, Ma’am Ophie has passed away (surprise for most of you, I’m sure), and apart from a mediocre writing award, a few pats on the back from some folks from the industry, all I have to show for my previous writerly life consists of a bunch of dead-end documents, some of them not even the most up-to-date versions, floating around in DropBox.
My life, as I know it, consists of a routine. That’s fret, fret, fret, several times throughout the day. It’s quite amazing, actually. You’d never imagine that there were so many ways to fret. Or to stress yourself out. Or, to put things in a vastly different perspective—which greatly depends on my mood at the moment—I’ve never thought that I would oscillate between treating incoming client emails with either the welcoming embrace you’d keep for a beloved dog, and the stick you’d use on that same dog if it were rabid.
See? Mood swings. Even in my blog posts, I’m fretting.
No, don’t worry, I’m not worrying about anything right now. It’s just that It’s three in the morning, it’s a Saturday, and I’ve tried to swear off work on the weekends, but I see nothing but a mountainful (yes, the mountain is big, but the organisms a single mountain can contain? be still my heart) of work looming ahead. People have been wondering if I’ve any semblance of a social life left. Some folks have even been wondering if I were still alive, for that matter.
John Pimentel used to regard my blog posts as much as he would a piece by Jessica Zafra. While that’s not really what I’d call a compliment, this is from the same guy who reads Alan Dean Foster and Margaret Atwood, and those authors I can handle. Now, I don’t really know if I write with the same fervor as I used to. I know all the grammar’s still there, or at least my innate ability to tell if a sentence is wrong or right is, if you can call the number of times I call one of my writers’ attention out as proof of my capability. That much, I guess, is a blessing.
But someday, I will live in a condo unit, hopefully with a scenic view, and I will have a meat pie cooking in the oven. As I wait, I will be adding a couple of new sentences to the story I’m writing. Maybe somebody will disturb me: maybe a cup of coffee needs to be made, or somebody in the company needs to be fired. Simple things, things that I can write down in my little red book, post date it to Tuesday, ask my secretary to take care of it, and get back to my meat pie before it gets burned.
Someday, I will also have a sharpei – labrador mix, and the association of the condominium I am unfortunately an occupant of won’t do anything about it.
Until then, though, expect less blog posts from me. Because you know, to be able to do that, I gotta be filthy stinkin’ rich first. And that ain’t gonna happen if I sit my ass all day and gripe on my blog.
By the way, who wants to bet anything that I edited this post? Bidding starts at PhP 100.00. Heh.
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