Compulsions

I guess there are places that are conducive to writing. There are times when I am compelled to write. Outside of work, most of the things I like to do need to be done at the proper time and the place. Otherwise, I will be itching for a pen and notebook or a piece of paper or an anxiety comes over me that I will force myself to sit down and set all my focus into accomplishing just one thing, whatever that may be.

Anything worth doing deserves passion. Writing or any other creative process needs to be an inspired effort. I cannot just sit and stare at a blank screen or sheet of paper all day and expect to do any sort of scribbling or that magically, my fingers would tap and glide over the keyboard by themselves without being driven by a thought or a germ of it.

This is something that ordinary people will never understand. It could take seconds or it can take years for a piece to be put down on paper. This is why I draw upon previous experiences because it would only be a matter of putting together a jigsaw puzzle of events. Once, while doing handicrafts, an ex-girlfriend insisted that I sat down and start on a batch of orders. I simply could not. I had to be in the right mood at the time which is why we had a specific turnaround time.

Writing is pretty much the same. I could go days or even months on end and not come up with a single line and yet, there was a project I did where I finished three storyboards in as little as 15 minutes!

Of course, much of the works I’ve done revolve around a certain character or a particular event in my life. One could say, I’ve gone through a lot and all that experience would go to waste if I can’t immortalize it in a piece. After all, we will all go through this life but once and in as much as we go through different things in the course of a day, what more in a year or ten or twenty?

If I wasn’t banging on the keyboard, I would be out with a camera or playing around with my blades. These are pastimes I’ve done for years but I really need to be in the zone to be able to pick up a blade and put it to the stone or head off to somewhere to shoot sunsets or still life or tabletop photos.

This makes me really useless in a corporate setting although I’ve worked as a journalist and TV production with insane deadlines and nagging bosses. How I survived those environments remains a mystery or maybe it was because I loved what I was doing back then that it became second nature to me to write or shoot under pressure.

That is the main difference now that I’m writing for myself. Yes, I’ve had works published—some good, some really bland but there were favorites of mine like the first article I wrote for the Philippine News Agency (PNA). There were also scripts for various documentary films I shot and starred in. So far, I have no real preferences or favorites. Writing is writing. It’s how I feel during the process that matters more to me than the praise I receive from readers or viewers.

This brings me to why I write. I cannot live a day and not have a thousand thoughts running around in my head. Writing helps me organize those thoughts, trashing out the bad and turning the good into a piece. It helps me deal with my demons and monsters that come to me in my quiet moments or ghosts from the past that just won’t leave me be. Writing helps me deal with pain and disappointment and failures and victories and conquests. Writing complements my photos and if they don’t, I make visual imagery with my words.

Like all great artists, my creative abilities are equaled only by my propensity for destruction if not, self-destruction. Life has put me in circumstances that subject me to pain and suffering. Despite my understanding of things not temporal, there is much more to the world that I can explain. For every question I can answer, there are hundreds more that get asked and the process goes on and on—solve one problem, create another.

Escapism is another preoccupation of mine and writing does this well for me. Once I’m in the zone, nothing and no one can reach me and that is why I can be perfectly fine on my own and at times, company can be distracting if not, annoying. I don’t watch television although I do love old films which I watch with headset donned and using just my laptop. My life and my soul rests in this machine as I breathe life into it. Having lost my old computer was tragic and there were memories in it that are now unrecoverable—year, decades of memories and the manuscript I was building up in the hope of publishing a book.

Writing has become, me in as much as I am my camera. People cannot think of me and not associate my name with photography or journalism. It was once my professional life and it has become what I am in the real world. It’s all I’d rather be if I wasn’t doing anything else.