"No, you will not walk away from your word this time,"
I told myself while trying to make a draft post while inside a moving van. I'm on my way south, to visit my very significant half. "You have allowed yourself to speak your mind on social media when you should be writing a blog." I paused, to commune with myself before writing my next words. "To indulge yourself a little longer with all the political banter, and bask at the approval you get from your community, will drain the last of your energies for this renewed enterprise."
I told myself while trying to make a draft post while inside a moving van. I'm on my way south, to visit my very significant half. "You have allowed yourself to speak your mind on social media when you should be writing a blog." I paused, to commune with myself before writing my next words. "To indulge yourself a little longer with all the political banter, and bask at the approval you get from your community, will drain the last of your energies for this renewed enterprise."
You see, February has always been the spring of my long-form writing project. Even when I don't blog anymore, I see to it that I return, and maybe, renew my bonds with that kid who used to reside in these pages. He has grown old and has learned to keep things to himself. Adulting forces a person to pick fights and tell tactical victories wisely. It makes you appear in control, at least on the surface.
While last year's blog anniversary celebrated my return to this form of medium, (only to disappear after a month because I'm nothing but a lazy blogger) this year's belated remembrance speaks of that drive, that all-consuming passion that empowers writers to leave their footprints on the web. Is it possible to pursue journal publishing without being read? Can we emulate what the artists of the past age did by simply leaving their diary hidden - only to be discovered after they have passed on?
We'll see.
I guess the challenge - for me - is that I used to have a community on Blogger. We read each others' lives and found comfort knowing we don't have a monopoly on both triumphs and struggles of living. We learned from each other. Now that silence nearly pervades in these halls - and that there is a packed room next door where you can tell everything in seconds - and get noticed by 3,000 souls is something that is more engaging.
It is actually addictive.
Kebs if your tweet is about that Igorot hottie at the Panagbenga who's scandal appeared a day after his six packs had gone viral.
What I'm pointing at is that it is hard to practice long-form writing when you have two home-based jobs, a larger responsibility at home because you can be a daddy na, and a medium that you're still debating whether to expose in public or not. Kasi you don't want your audience to catch you staring at your navel like others do. Add to that that you've never had a niche market, you're domesticated and has purged the dramas of living a secret life, and you like to post tweets about the fuck-ups of this government and nothing more.
So are there things still worth writing? The answer is yes. The problem is time.
But this doesn't mean goodbye, and unlike the bands who come and go after their gigs are over, I would like to think that there's more to discover and be shared to everyone. I'd like to breathe nostalgia now that I'm more than a decade old in blogging. As to how much could be written, should be left for another day. I'm about to disembark now and would you believe it took me less than an hour to write this personal reflection?
Of course, it doesn't include the revisions, which I hope, won't consume my return trip back home. I'm still hoping to write about Edsa and how dystopian our lives have become.
