One would think of all the overthinking overthinkers do that they would have already thought of at least a million ways to cure or alleviate the, at times, maddening thoughts that occur when one is overthinking.
Yet here we are. Simply stuck in all the maddening thoughts swirling… Traveling through years and light-years. Of the fiction and non-fiction memories in varying resolutions. Of mentally recorded conversations. Of what might have beens. Of what could be.
Overthinking.
08.25.2018 03:25am
[Thoughts written as I revisit my love (nay, obsession?) with Paolo Nutini while drunk on mint tea coz I’m hardcore like that]
Write everyday. This is something I’ve been told by many people in my life many times over. Write everyday. Write something – anything – everyday.
I used to write everyday. I grew up keeping a diary which I gave many nicknames coz I wanted to be original and since I treated my diary like a friend it seemed only fitting that my friend would have a name that’s not generic as ‘diary’.
The obsession with keeping a diary started perhaps when I was around 9 or 10 years old. The diaries started out filled with dreams I could recall and also showcased my love for Backstreet Boys and how well I knew MTV (back when MTV was still MTV).
As the years pressed on, the pen and paper later became my outlet as I entered the weird and confusing and angry teenage years. I wrote and wrote and wrote. I had friends but it felt better when I wrote. I understood myself better when I wrote it down. Unloading emotions that my teenage heart and mind could barely hold.
I am being dramatic, of course. I don’t think my teenage years was all that complicated or that I was complicated but I guess part of that was because I had something to turn to. I had my music. I had my writing. Left with in my room a radio, my guitar, a pen and a few sheets of paper and maybe my diary, I was good. That was heaven.
Write everyday.
I used to write everyday.
Then I started to work and growing up took more of my energy that I couldn’t write down things anymore. I didn’t want to write down things anymore. What was there to write? What was the beauty about growing up and having to own up? I had no more daily mundane things to write because it was all becoming much too big and heavy to bear most times that words didn’t do any of it justice.
I focused on my music. I always tried getting a song out of me at least once every two months. I wrote alot of songs that were, looking back now, quite honestly good and were significant in helping me learn about myself and the world around me. In my youth, I was fearless and hopeful. That showed in my writing.
The deeper I got into my relationship with coffee, I discovered, the better my writing got. The more caffeine I got, the wittier the lines were and tighter the structure if it was a song or a poem.
But like I said, growing up became too much. It took all my energy. I had nothing left to spare. I couldn’t shut the noise in my head that was screaming for the noise of the world to shut up.
However, it’s in these moments that I try. I wait for a calm to come around. The calm that takes place before the madness. I take a few deep breaths. I pick up a pen and find a few sheets of paper – still feels as good as it’s always felt – and I write. It will start off rusty, words won’t come as smoothly as they did but I write. You’ve first got to write off the dust before you find yourself again.
And here I am, writing. Revisiting my old self. To when I was sure and fearless.
08.10.2018 10:45pm
Today’s 04L Chronicles entry is brought to you by a bright red multicab. The kind of bright red where if you tilt your head a little bit and it catches some light, it looks more orange than red.
The ride is dank and stuffy courtesy of the weather disturbance our humble island has caught due to the typhoon hitting up north. (In all honesty, we have better weather when the typhoon actually hits us. And no, I don’t thank religion, I thank the forces that placed our island where it is.)
The dankness and stuffiness caused by the intermittent rain all afternoon and evening has left this jeepney with its plastic flaps rolled down to avoid drenching the passengers but have left minimal air to pass through. An experience that’s a little too familiar in our neck of the woods.
Everything in the city is damp and sticky and a bit smelly at the moment. That collaboration of humanity’s sweat (coz at the end of the day, typhoon or no typhoon, this is still a very tropical island in a very tropical country) and rain-soakedness plus all the years and years of poor garbage disposal that’s collected and clogged up the drainage systems accumulating not only trash but decay and yes, that stench. This journey is reminding me a bit of a trip to Carbon of sorts.
I am, of course, exaggerating bits of it.
Rained in Cebu (outside of a stuffy jeepney) is a thing of beauty that it’s otherworldly. The cold wind breathing through the streets, a reprieve from all the burning, heat and humidity. The rain water cooling the earth, an escape from all the dust, dirt and sand that have been engraved in our systems since birth. Rained in Cebu is my favorite kind of Cebu.
P. S. I just had to add: A block from where I live stood a man wearing a full black raincoat outside an abandoned building. He stood so still as the jeep drove by that I swear he could’ve passed for a dementor.
August 08, 2018. A Wednesday.
At around 8pm, as I was taking a stroll around the office trying to walk off the chicken proven I had for dinner, I caught up with a colleague I hadn’t hung out with in awhile. I decided to walk with her for a bit.
She pointed at my plaid polo and said, ‘Oh, I thought you had it on inside out’.
‘What?’, I said, trying to brush it off thinking how silly of her, I mean, I’d know if the thing I was wearing was worn the wrong way.
She then pointed at the stitching. I paused. Then ultimately had to admit the human error.
I went back to my station thinking I could just wing this. After all, I’m more than halfway through my shift now, I even stood infront of a class for nearly two hours and have not had any problems with my outfit.
I thought I could wing it. Simply brush it off as a style choice. Then I remembered the ginormous tag situated at the neck of the polo. I realized how wrong I was.
I then flipped the polo and put it on properly.
Oh, to be human.
From This Suok 