thursday, inspired

a grumbling stomach, a grammar consultation, and a dream project have brought me to that "inspired" state of mind again (okay, the bad-tempered stomach has nothing to do with this; it does, however, keeps me seated in my office chair).  unfortunately, the moments of inspiration come and go quickly, and usually none of them has anything to do with finishing starting my thesis.

i have this urge to create.  i've been putting snippets of my daily life in a notebook, filling it with receipts, little pieces of paper, random thoughts.  things i would no doubt enjoy looking at when i get bored ten years from now.  it's a scrapbook minus the fluff.  it's coming along fine so far, and i wonder what my thirty-seven-year-old self will think of me when she is reminded of how much i spent on a meal, or how much a taxi ride (from home to work one day i was running late) cost me.

i have another notebook for doodling purposes, but uh, i think i have to get over the fact that *it's a really nice notebook, too nice to ruin with my sketches*.  every time i discover a "new" artist (whose work i really like) i have this feeling, like a bucket of warm sparkly honey suddenly gets poured all over my insides and tides me over in a great rush of inspiration.  i grab my pen and open to a blank page in my notebook, and that's when the fuzziness stops.  i stare at the page and feel guilty for even attempting to draw.  thus my notebook is saved from desecration. (slashes wrist)

but a girl's gotta believe she can, right?

and so i have another channel: writing.  you see this blog? can you not see how much i haven't written?  i blame myself and tumblr for the short attention span and the desire for little pockets of information instead of long good reads.

while on my lunch break today an acquaintance buzzed me up, asking for sentence construction advice.  when i had given her what i thought was a better phrase, she casually asked if i would be interested to give a tutorial on writing in english to three adults.  are they non-filipino? i asked, expecting korean students about to take an english comprehensive exam.  she answered that actually, she and a couple of friends had been wanting to brush up on their writing, as they were getting rusty.  i said the best tip would be to practice writing / keep on writing, and to read a lot.  and write more, even short, everyday sketches.  then i realized i haven't been doing that myself, which brings me to why i'm blogging right now.

in college my pals thought i was a good writer because i had a flair for language (ohmy my head is so big like, wait okay lemme go on), and that i would be a good children's fiction writer.  i did try, but i think i've forgotten how it was to be a kid and so didn't know what a good story would be for them young 'uns.  i thought i would be better off writing nonsense-with-sense (or, confused) prose pieces, because fiction was just too...structured and serious.  it didn't help that two of my exes wrote good fiction--gaaah i just didn't want to compare my work with theirs, there's too much familiarity in this small writing community, etc. etc. etc. (insert other insecurity, relationship issues here), but really i'm just making lame excuses for not writing.

wait, keeping a blog counts as writing, right? ha ha.

what's the point of this whole post anyway?

i'm still alive, and i am thankful to the universe for keeping me inspired (yeah it also takes a dump on my face every now and then, but hey i'm keeping positive here).  when i'm really lucky, i get inspired enough to summon up some discipline to sit and write, to craft, to draw.  i am awed at the work and dedication of other people, friends, friends of friends. i'm sounding overly emotional now, and i keep saying i'll do this and that, but what i've actually accomplished so far is accumulate a number of not-even-half-filled notebooks.  impressive hoarding, i must say.

the dream project i mentioned at the beginning of the post is a collab between this wannabe writer and her artist partner.  let's give kidfict another shot, hmm?

oh, and i've also ventured into another field of interest, a physical one, but more about that some other time.  :)


thank you for reading.  i don't make sense sometimes but it's good you understand i don't have to make sense all the time anyway.