I am sitting at a local coffee joint contemplating the one month’s notice I am to give my boss tomorrow and reading the opinions section of the Inquirer when I realize I have no idea what I am going to do next.The general plan is to write. But here I am reading Conrado de Quiros and Manuel L. Quezon III. Guys who can write. Guys who can spout commentary like it was the easiest thing to do.
What the hell was I thinking? I wasn’t a writer! I had absolutely no background training and the only thing I could boast of so far was being editor of the company fluff publication and having satisfactory grammar. De Quiros is a writer. He’d been writing for the Inquirer for as long as I could remember and was a master of pointing out the obvious, the ironic and the hilarious in contemporary society. I can’t even find the right words to describe and give justice to his writing (Mr. de Quiros, if you ever get to read this, am terribly sorry for the lack of better words used to describe your writing style – all the SMBs I have downed have left me partially brain dead), let alone write my own crap in as searing and coherent a manner.I always thought one day I’d wake up and know what it was that I was meant to do. I’ve been more or less lost for the past decade, but three weeks ago I thought that I finally knew what it was I could do. And I was cocky enough to think that now that I knew, and now that I had the balls to actually drop everything and give it a go, that everything would just fall into place.
Life apparently doesn’t work that way. You know how everyone says follow your dream and the universe will conspire to help you out and all that? Well, I’ve got news for you, the figuring out what it is you want to do is one thing, the making it happen is quite another. True, there are gifted individuals out there for whom innate talent has been an express ticket to glory and success. But what of the rest of us who know that, given enough time to practice and learn, they can be good, but aren’t sure that they can ever measure up to greatness? Not the greatness they aspire to anyway.What happens when one has no idea what the next step is? When one’s own parents are supportive but never really believed you could really write either? How does one go from dreamer to sought after writer?I feel a wood beetle moment coming up. I am tempted to start banging my head against the wood paneling to my right (I was once told that when agitated, wood beetles bang their heads against wood) but am afraid I will disturb the other patrons and that the barista will ask me to leave and possibly never return.I have no good ending to this piece, except that I will endeavor not to make a scene and get thrown out of the café. And although I am scared shitless, I will give this writing gig a try. I couldn’t live with myself otherwise.
What the hell was I thinking? I wasn’t a writer! I had absolutely no background training and the only thing I could boast of so far was being editor of the company fluff publication and having satisfactory grammar. De Quiros is a writer. He’d been writing for the Inquirer for as long as I could remember and was a master of pointing out the obvious, the ironic and the hilarious in contemporary society. I can’t even find the right words to describe and give justice to his writing (Mr. de Quiros, if you ever get to read this, am terribly sorry for the lack of better words used to describe your writing style – all the SMBs I have downed have left me partially brain dead), let alone write my own crap in as searing and coherent a manner.I always thought one day I’d wake up and know what it was that I was meant to do. I’ve been more or less lost for the past decade, but three weeks ago I thought that I finally knew what it was I could do. And I was cocky enough to think that now that I knew, and now that I had the balls to actually drop everything and give it a go, that everything would just fall into place.
Life apparently doesn’t work that way. You know how everyone says follow your dream and the universe will conspire to help you out and all that? Well, I’ve got news for you, the figuring out what it is you want to do is one thing, the making it happen is quite another. True, there are gifted individuals out there for whom innate talent has been an express ticket to glory and success. But what of the rest of us who know that, given enough time to practice and learn, they can be good, but aren’t sure that they can ever measure up to greatness? Not the greatness they aspire to anyway.What happens when one has no idea what the next step is? When one’s own parents are supportive but never really believed you could really write either? How does one go from dreamer to sought after writer?I feel a wood beetle moment coming up. I am tempted to start banging my head against the wood paneling to my right (I was once told that when agitated, wood beetles bang their heads against wood) but am afraid I will disturb the other patrons and that the barista will ask me to leave and possibly never return.I have no good ending to this piece, except that I will endeavor not to make a scene and get thrown out of the café. And although I am scared shitless, I will give this writing gig a try. I couldn’t live with myself otherwise.
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