Third World Writer

I just realized that today was the last day of August. This marks the end of my one month away from Facebook, and I must say it was much easier than I expected. It got boring at times when there was nothing else to do online, but then I remembered I live in the real world, and there’s a bunch of other stuff to do in real life. Like, for example, living.

I must confess that I didn’t get very far with my reading project though. Although it’s a really short book, I’m only still a few chapters into The Great Gatsby, because a lot of other more interesting things were taking up my time. But I’ve found a bit more time now, thanks to my new-found insomnia, so I should be able to finish it soon and get started with The Hunger Games series. I hear it’s quite good.

One of the more interesting things that have been taking up my time this past month is swimming. On weekends I impose upon my friends and crash at their condo for a few days, where late afternoons are often spent at the pool, swimming laps. If you know anything about geeks you should know they don’t go very well with water (and eating after midnight), so between splashing and cramping and swallowing mouthfuls of chlorinated water, I don’t usually manage to swim very far. I’ve improved a bit though; recently I’ve learned to inhale some air along with the water, and some new (relatively) cheap goggles have helped me to move in a semi-straight line.

I am of course a land mammal, and will always prefer running to swimming, but I haven’t found the time to jog around the UPD oval lately. With my boss scheduling meetings for after 6:30pm and setting deadlines for that same evening, I’m forced to take the late train home, or the occasional bus when I miss the MRT and taxi lines are long, and there’s no time or energy left after the commute to even walk to the UP oval. It seems there is a need to take control of my work schedule again. I’ll try not to make anyone cry this time around.

I haven’t really been away from Facebook that long, now that I think about it. One month really isn’t that long. I don’t miss it in the least, but the fact that it helps you connect to people from long ago and far away is annoyingly undeniable. So I will end my little no-Facebook experiment now, at least for the moment. Perhaps next month I’ll do it again.

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Technically since I logged in on August 1 to make sure my birthday wasn’t displayed and my twitter and blog weren’t connected to my Facebook wall, my one month ends tomorrow, so I’m logging in again the day after, if only to check if I’ve got any important messages.

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Also I hear my blog’s still being posted on my Notes even though I killed the permissions. Fuck you and your blatant disregard for privacy settings, Facebook.

I’ve been spending a considerable amount of time at the arcade these past weeks. Among the pings, rings and kaploinks of the games around me I find some much needed sanctuary from the real world, distractions to clear my mind and forget a few hundred worries for a while. The mechanical task of putting junior-sized basketballs through a low hoop is surprisingly calming, even after the sweat and the aching arms, and shooting cardboard cut-outs on a large TV with a plastic gun is a happy alternative to an empty room.

years and counting.

down.

I am currently in the process of upgrading myself, and at the moment I’m stuck on Frank v2.02. Progress is slow, but I’m getting there, wherever it is ‘there’ should happen to be.

In the process of upgrading myself I’ve decided certain aspects of my life have to change. For v2.02 of myself I’ve decided to do two things: read more, and give up Facebook.

Facebook has its uses, but I never really felt all that attached to it. While I do learn a few things from the links people share, more than anything else it has been a major time-waster, and I do think I would be better of without it than with it. Plus I hate their privacy policy. So, for a trial period of the whole of August, I will stay off Facebook. I will still have my Twitter and my blog, but I’ll be disconnecting them from my Facebook updates when time permits. My own little Fuck You to Facebook.

I’ve also decided to read more. Being around Filipino Freethinkers, it’s difficult not to notice how little I’ve read compared to what I consider to be normal people. That needs to be remedied.

But it’s not so much that other people have read more that I’ve decided to read again. Writing is just something I’ve enjoyed doing for a while, and it sort of follows that to improve on writing I have to read the stuff that good writers write, right? Right. And just as I’ve been browsing Deviant Art for a while to improve my drawing, I’ve decided to read a bunch of books, classics and modern alike, to perhaps improve on what little skill and inspiration I have. Also, I hear there are quite a few good books out there that could use some reading.

Quitting Facebook and sticking my face in an actual book are two of the easier tasks on my upgrade list, so I figured I’d get them done early. Pretty soon I’m gonna have to deal with the more difficult parts, the parts I don’t think I could write about, but for now I’m taking it slowly, surely.

My system is malfunctioning.

Every once in a while, for no apparent reason, my chest feels heavy, and I have to breathe in deeply to compose myself. It feels like a great surge of some unspecified emotion has forced itself into me, and for a few seconds my brain turns to soup. I can’t figure out if it’s the good sort of emotion or the bad, and my confusion allows it to sway from one to the other. One minute the swell of emotion presents as an immense sadness, and my mind reaches for the most minuscule reasons to feel sad, no matter how remote or how illogical. The next minute I feel ridiculously excited, as though the code I was fixing would solve all the world’s problems.

Emotions are strange.

The ambiguity of what I’ve been feeling lately is upsetting. It suggests that I am able to feel this strongly without qualifying what the feeling is, and without anything to feel that strongly about. This either calls into question the validity of my emotions or suggests that I’m too stupid to understand myself.

I’m hoping it’s the latter.

2.2 kilometers in 14 minutes, 35.86 seconds.

This is a milestone for me. It’s only the second time I managed to jog the distance without rest, and the first time I’ve timed it. Although it’s nothing to brag about, it makes me terribly proud that at the end of the jog, I didn’t feel the need to puke my brains out.

I have decided I have no need to run 10km, or 5km, or anything greater than 2.2. They serve no practical purpose, and I can lose the weight I need to without running such ridiculous distances. 2.2km meanwhile is the exact circumference of the UPD oval, and therefore easy to measure, and is a practical enough distance that, in any normal emergency, a person might find himself needing to run. Instead of training for any of the popular marathons that people these days are into, I’ve decided to slowly but surely shorten my time running 2.2km. The end goal is to be able to run my top speed for 2.2km straight, but I recognize that this may be impossible, so I will aim to run just half of that at top speed, and the rest at a respectable pace. Ideally I will still have enough energy left over after the run to be able to do whatever it is one does in an emergency besides run.

Today I swam a little, and then I jogged a little, and my body feels great. Tired, but great. On the last third of my run it began to rain, and I discovered how nice the UPD oval is on a rainy night. The track clears of joggers, cars slow down, street lamps dim their lights. I can hear my breath clearer than before, even against the hum of the rain drops.

I sound so alive.

Some time ago, my uncle told me to wash my mouth out with soap, because my YM status was something like “Fuck This Shit”. He said I was eloquent enough to express myself without having to resort to foul language, and he was right. Damn my eloquence. I could use longer sentences, kinder words, and I could express the same crummy sentiment is less colorful language, the same way disagreements can always be solved without resorting to violence. It just wouldn’t make me feel as good.

So I ignored my uncle, with all due respect, and changed my status: Fuck. This. Fucking. Shit.

It’s easy for people to get offended by profanity. Personally, I’ve always considered it just another language, even before I ever spoke a word of it. It was a method of expression that neither bruised my skin, blackened my lungs nor irritated my eyes. It was not offensive, insulting, or threatening, because early on I understood that the most painful words are spoken smoothly, quietly and with a smile. Lies hurt more that profanity. And truth hurts more than lies.

I don’t often curse around people who don’t like it, because these people don’t speak the language (so if you don’t like me cursing around you, let me know). But when I post a status message, that’s my own thing going on. You don’t have to read it. But if you do, understand that the meaning is there behind coarse, rude, disrespectful arrangement of letters. And if you still don’t understand it, don’t worry. That’s kinda the fucking point.

Since deciding last Saturday to write more often, I’ve realized that I haven’t done anything new recently. Considering I live a very routine life and hardly do anything new anyway, this isn’t actually very strange, but a number of changes have been happening around me and I figured I need to make a few changes as well. And I’ve decided to start with Wednesday.

Something’s happening this Wednesday that a few people seem to want to celebrate, so I have an unexpected day off from work. It would seem a shame to waste such a day on lazing around at home, so I’ve decided to do something unusual on that day. What that something is I have yet to decide, but I have a pretty good (actually, ridiculous) idea..

..which I could do alone..

..but for which it would be nice to have a date..

..I suppose.

I have resolved today to write again. Little by little, if that’s what it takes, even useless crap like this. The first rule of writing is, of course, to write something, and it’s a rule I often skip. But not today. Today, I am writing.

My biggest problem with Twitter and Facebook is that that have shortened my already short attention span. I’ve always had a problem writing long posts, and now I can’t even sustain a thought long enough to write a paragraph. I’ve sort of mastered the art of fitting a thought into 140 characters without resorting to rmvng vwls, but have forgotten the voice I used to have that could tell volumes worth of stories.

I have resolved today to write again, and I will begin with this: I am hungry.

That’s it, little by little.

I seem to have forgotten that I’m not an athlete.

Last week I swore to jog four times a week, or at the very least, once a week for an hour or so. Today I jogged a kilometer or so and almost fainted. As soon as I stopped moving my throat felt dry, my head felt light, and my hearing went dull. It was just a kilometer, but it was naive to think I could just jog that distance all of a sudden with zero preparation. I’m not a jock; I’m a grade A, premium 100% nerd-geek.

I need to adjust my goals. I sure as hell can’t just run marathons right away, but even though I felt like puking immediately after, I’ve discovered I can run a km without any lasting fatigue. My muscles aren’t screaming, my feet don’t hurt, I’m not in as bad a shape as I thought. I’m a little anemic, but that can be fixed. So goal number one: Endurance.

I need to start at a slower pace, matching the slowest joggers I encounter along the oval. I went half the circumference of the UPD oval tonight, so next time I’ll try it again, slower, and see if I feel any side effects. If none, I’ll try for a full round, 2.2km.

When I manage to jog 5km, however slowly, I’ll think about goal number two. Slowly and surely is the key, but not too slow. I like pushing myself to some limits.