Month: November 2025

Sometimes, when I look at my old blog posts, I contemplate my long-held dream of becoming a writer. By “writer” I used to mean someone who wrote fiction or poetry. A published author. From an early age I knew there was stuff in my head—I would spend most of my waking childhood hours sketching sequential drawings in an attempt to purge it all out. I wonder—and I’m sure this is not the first time I arrive at this question—whether my adult anxiety stems from the absence of a purging valve to let out the contents of my mind.

Convinced that writing was my calling, I made many embarrassing attempts at both fiction and poetry, all the while maintaining a couple of blogs (yes, like this one). Some of the stuff I made got published in school journals, and I was even invited to read at a poetry festival, so I’m guessing I wasn’t terrible, but it still feels like the attempts were embarrassing. As tends to be the case with anything you stop practicing, I stopped writing poetry and the well of ideas dried up. As for fiction, I don’t think I ever had a well of ideas to draw from. Or maybe there were seeds of ideas, but they just never sprouted.

An ex-boyfriend once told me I was nothing but a blog writer. His intention was clearly to hurt me, but I’ve increasingly warmed to the idea. I see myself as a diarist. My work may not bear witness to our tumultuous times, but it bears witness to the evolution of a single human being. That should be enough.

Yesterday afternoon, in the quiet of the kitchen, I was prying open a pomegranate and pulling out its arils when I noticed something unexpected happening to me: An idea was coming to me. Words were flowing inside my mind, arranged in patterns that I thought might be worth putting on paper—or rather, putting on screen—, and I didn’t feel like just letting them go in resignated defeat. This time, unlike myriads of other times, I wasn’t daunted by the prospect of having to sit down and think on my own for a while instead of literally anything else. When I say “literally anything else,” what I actually mean is peeling my eyes off the screen in order to glue them onto a different screen and give up my creative power in exchange for countless invitations to part ways with my money.

Anyway, that’s how I ended up writing yesterday’s blog post. Since then, a steady stream of words has been flowing through my head nonstop. I can feel it—it’s a nice little river with a pleasant murmur. But that’s not the only change I’ve noticed. This morning, I surprised myself with a burst of clarity at work. Beautifully crafted sentences poured effortlessly from my mouth, carried by my velvety voice. I hadn’t sounded this way in ages.

Although these changes feel a little abrupt and have taken me aback, I know they’re not an accidental occurrence. The thing is, I’ve been mulling things over. (I can’t help picturing my thoughts as spices simmering in wine. Tasty.) I’ve been paying special attention to the many instances where I’ve heard about someone doing something for themselves—writing, drawing, working out—and I’ve felt sorry for myself because I, unlike them, am incapable of such feats. The intolerable self-pity, which sometimes took the shape of self-loathing, bored a hole in my heart, and eventually it became a burrow for a certain discomfort that came to nest right there.

You know, it’s good to mull things over, especially if the matters you’re pondering are related to changes you’d like to bring about in your life. This is true even if you’re at the stage where you still feel utterly powerless. You think it over and over and over, and the discomfort within you grows and grows and grows, and you never know when the kernel will pop and you’ll just jump into action.

Now, jumping into action is easy. There’s usually a lot of emotional momentum going on to propel a first leap. It’s messy, beautiful and empowering. However, the real challenge lies in consistency. Can I keep it up? Am I really willing to go the distance and work hard to become the person I’ve been wishing I were? That’s the part that makes me nervous. But I suppose the fact that I’m writing these words and haven’t given up on this open tab with its handful of paragraphs proves that, at least today, I already am that person.

Like many in our entertainment-addled society, I watch reality TV on occasion. I wanted to say I’m “fond” of certain series, but that’s not the appropriate word to describe my feelings toward them. They’re like junk food—irresistible, empty, always disappointing, yet always leaving me wanting more. Maybe next time the loose ends will be tied. Maybe next season.

As cast members transition from a regular life into the life of a D-list celebrity, their appearance morphs into the uncanny valley of eternal youth, or rather, the eternal chase thereof. Are we meant to envy that? To want that for ourselves? It looks painful, actually, like an overly tuned drumhead that could rip at any moment. Nobody could mistake that for the appearance of a young person.

But that’s not the most pitiable thing. What’s sad is knowing that these people have chosen to work in an environment of pure toxicity, and their job is to exude as much bile as possible, to hurl it at their colleagues and let it rain down on them. They pollute the world around them, all glitter and gloom, poisoning themselves for the audience. It’s the ultimate sacrifice: they never get to go home and unwind after work, because home is also work. Their bed at night. Their innermost thoughts. It’s all on display for the cameras. They entertain for a living; they live to entertain.

Meanwhile, I’m watching it all unfold, consuming bits of that poison like flakes of fish food, idly waiting for a dénouement that will never come. Who knows, maybe next season.