January

Funny how these past couple of years I consistently nudged me to write again and not a single entry was produced - neither a ranting nor a raving one. A lot funnier when all of a sudden, on this cold, rainy Monday morning, I felt the urge to write.

I will not tell you what took me so long to write. The more significant question is why would I still bother to write given the following circumstances. First, my writing is not that impressive (heck, my articulation needs more crunches the same way my bulging stomach does); in fact, I blabber a lot and most often, I feel guilty about losing my sense of coherence from time to time. The same thing applies to my current life. Instead of stories about bungee jumping or rock climbing or traveling, I have lectures, boarding wrong jeepneys and other classroom booboos to tell.

Moreover, there are tons of blogs I have come across that feeds my eyes with breathtaking photographs and those visuals already seem to be everything – a package of unspoken words, a faint scent, a familiar audio and some imaginary conversation. And in some cases, I agree it would be best to leave photos that way.

But alas, the most decent camera I own is a 3.0 megapixel which also happens to be a resident of my still-sturdy-mobile-phone-despite-being-gravity’s-favorite-victim. So, photographs are things I find difficult to offer you. And that is why I write. Hahaha! (evil Megamind-ish laughter slowly fading)

Seriously. I am writing for several reasons. I am writing because my best friend (whose real name Cherry I have converted into Grilled Cheesus) living a plane away from Davao has been prodding for more of my hilarious stories. And since I seldom text and get connected to the internet (and now I hear you wondering what kind of life I have) because I am ‘de-cluttering’(and now you go, what the?!), I thought writing down those stories would stop Grilled Cheesus from bugging me (atik lang, cheese. You know I love you to death).

I am writing because try as I may, I cannot convert my thoughts into one status message. We are at a day and age when the quality of thinking had declined into face book statuses which are either uncensored rants, boisterous raves in all caps, unnecessary routine information, academic pretentiousness and some puke worthy PDA (and because at this minute, several people have probably started to click ‘unfriend’ next to my profile picture, if not ‘report’), SAVE of course for a few brilliant posts by some of my true friends. I love you, friends! (Palakas dayon para dili madelete. Hahaha.)

I am writing because there is something about retelling and archiving stories that feeds my drive for discovery.

I am writing because there are so many things in my life right now worth writing – friends, dinners, conversations, things to be grateful for, significant everyday encounters – all in a brand new framework.

I am finally writing because I am trying to get rid of thoughts of having the perfect blog with wonderful photographs and artsy lay out. Like how Cherry puts it, start writing, worry about the photos and blog structure later. Just start writing.

And so, in my floral pajamas and college-old sweater, I start to write on this cold rainy, Monday morning.