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A River Runs Through It

It has been exactly four weeks since the Luzon quarantine, and everybody I've been speaking with via social media is either going stir crazy due to being stuck indoors for this long, or working very hard to adapt, although I'm happy to say that I haven't done either of the two, mostly because I'm incredibly used to being incarcerated stuck at home for long periods of time, and that I'm not really somebody who looks to the great outdoors for something to do; if my mind can keep myself entertained for extended periods, then being cooped in was never really a problem. 


No, I'm not going crazy. I'm just very, very good at letting my mind wander. (i.e. my focus is shot)

So what have I been up to? Well, since there's no way I can go around and manage stuff for the family business, I've gone back to writing. I know that blogging doesn't generally count as writing, but I've done very little in terms of personal writing / journaling in a long time, and it's always nice to unclog the gunk that builds up in the gears of the mind for a change. There was this time where I challenged myself to write five hundred words of non-work writing a day, and while that helped, it was never really something I could sustain. 

So writing. I've restarted talking to clients about writing stuff for them, and it's been slow, but steady going. It's nice to know that I haven't lost much goodwill in that industry ever since I stopped writing full time and started focusing on other stuff. Not that, you know, I'm happy to write copy again, but you gotta have three things in life. One is for work, and the other one is a hobby. That doesn't mean that both of these things can't be the same thing (especially since writing copy is nowhere near the same neighborhood as creative writing; they're not even neighbors. Creative writing lives in a shack by the river, where he can go out to catch fish whenever he wants to. Copywriting lives in the cement jungle, where traffic and pollution is rampant.)

Writing aside, I've also been trying to find creative ways to work out. With the gym closed, that means I need to work out from home, and I don't have enough iron on hand to make home workouts even close to what I've been doing the past few months. So I've gotten creative. I'm happy to say that it's been helping me somewhat, and it's always fun to let my mind figure out alternative exercises to what I've become accustomed to – so much so that I've become more or less interested in creating my own weights with cement and tin cans. It's all in my head though, and I still haven't gotten around to figuring out the how to getting it done. 

I haven't been out of the house much these past few weeks, except to talk to people from the baranggay, and to do groceries at the supermarket across the Pasig river (hah! there's the title of this post). That's a good 1.8 kilometers away from my home, and the lack of public transportation means that I have to lug my weekly groceries back across that distance. It's been exhilirating, but my knees have been paying from that intense loaded carry. So I guess I probably need to buy knee bands to keep them from deteriorating more in the next three weeks of quarantine. 

And that's it from me today. Here's to hoping that you guys are staying home, staying safe, and taking care of your mental health. Flatten the curve, keep the people at risk safe, and get creative for the duration of this quarantine!
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