Category: Rant

I don’t consider myself to be a particularly articulate person, especially now that I’ve been an interpreter for so long. I’m always speaking on behalf of others, and rarely for myself, so words tend to fail me in conversation. I get nervous and then even my pronunciation goes out the window.

Of course, this wasn’t always the case. I used to be a skilled writer and a somewhat pleasant speaker. Oh, here we go again with the griping about not writing and not thinking sharply and not speaking fluently! If only all that bellyaching would translate into actual action! But no—here we are again, months on after the last time you said you’d do something about it. Is today finally the day you’ll follow through on your word?

Anyway, maybe I’m digressing here, but I keep having this feeling that my English is outdated. I was watching Daria on TV the other day and everything sounded so familiar, so cozy, so much like things I’d feel comfortable uttering. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not as if I stopped watching TV between 2002 and now, especially now that everything’s TV, but at some point I became disconnected from the public discourse. And then I started losing entire chunks of my vocabulary. I’m sure I’ve said this before, but I guess that the absolute passivity of today’s media consumption renders an active speaking brain limp.

I have stated here my intention to socialize more in order to bring my language skills back up to scratch. However, the world around me makes it hard (hear me whine again). Last night I had dinner with a group of people from Cavorite’s workplace, and I found myself desperately trying to entertain the guy sitting next to me, like fanning a flame that just wouldn’t catch. I started feeling nervous and second-guessing my every word, and then my pronunciation started coming out all wrong. I could see the guy’s face melting into utter boredom. Then life showed some mercy and the gathering was over.

At first I thought I was angry with myself for not being eloquent enough, but then I realized was I actually angry at was the fact that I had to be this guy’s buffoon in order to save our side of the table from falling into complete uncomfortable silence. How was that my responsibility?

Fortunately, life will keep throwing opportunities to get out there and try my hand at chatting and putting sentences together for other people. We’ll see how it goes next time.

I spent the past weekend visiting my childhood home with my parents. Here’s an inventory of things I ate at different neighborhood businesses (mainly bakeries):

• Changua [milk-based soup with eggs, green onion and cilantro] (and hot chocolate)
• Arepa [cornmeal flatbread] with cheese (and hot chocolate)
• Cow feet soup (and hot chocolate)
• Rotisserie chicken with baked sweet plantains and salted potatoes
• Leche asada [baked milk pudding] (and coffee)

As I stepped out into the arrivals hall, the first thing I noticed was a display counter full of empanadas. I couldn’t have asked for a better sight.

My brain, like almost any brain in this dystopian era, has been hijacked by the Distraction Machine. I used to fancy myself a creative person, as this blog can attest, but my ideas dried out at some point. A hunch about the culprit led me to cutting back on social media use, which yielded an interesting observation: I still had germs of ideas, but whenever a new one seeped in, the urge to check a shiny screen for kernels of novelty took over, and thus the idea was promptly squashed.

Laying down new ideas requires time and effort. However, we leave our ideas to rot at the vine because we believe we are too busy and exhausted to do anything with them. And in any case, what good are they if they are not commercial grade. Only what is worth monetizing is worth pursuing, the Machine rules.

As such, the Distraction Machine keeps us convinced that our time outside of work is worthless. It acts as if it were scavenging bits of useless time, but what it actually does is find pockets of perfectly valuable free time and engulf them. However, the thing is, it doesn’t find them by itself—we offer our free time as tribute to it of our own accord.

I loathe the thought that I sacrificed so much of myself for so little. I loved my hobbies. They made me who I was. And I let go of them in exchange for what, entertainment? What’s more, I deemed myself unworthy of them because I could not turn them into reliable sources of revenue. I’m putting an end to all that nonsense now.

I hereby undertake to pursue my hobbies for no other purpose than to have fun, make good use of my time and possibly improve certain skills which I don’t intend to use to make a profit. My dilettantism shall be my act of resistance against the Distraction Machine.