MussoLOLen is Always Right! |

“I miss your smell. When you left I couldn’t wash the sheets because I didn’t want to lose that completely – you. And it fucked me up for a long time because I’d wake up and I’d smell you and I’d think you were there, and my heart would break all over again.”

- Hank Moody, Californication, s01e05

I hit the pause button on my media player just so I could scribble down these lines. Sure, it may not be literature with a capital L, but this passage was simple and raw in a way that I found utterly beautiful. Every time I stumble upon writing that stops me dead in my tracks, I ask myself why I can’t come up with anything remotely as good. It’s not because I’m too busy – while my old day job ate a lot of my time and energy, I still managed to find ways to capture my working class angst in words. It’s not that my life has become any less exciting either; it’s still very eventful in ways the Internet can never know. As I was basking in the jouissance of this passage, the answer hit me out of nowhere.

I’m too happy to write.

I can’t write about my love life because I have a very romantic boyfriend who is very patient with me (even though he shouldn’t be, sometimes). Well yes, I have written about him, but my entries about Marco are so chirpy and happy, like a toothpaste commercial. None of the pained anguish and longing of my brokenhearted prose.

I can’t write about my job because my clients are generous, flexible, and prompt with my salary. Bonus: my workplace is right next to my bed.

I can’t write about my friends because they’re all mature enough to avoid stupid drama. (And if they’re not, at least their drama doesn’t involve me.) (By the way, writing about your friends in your blog – usually a bad idea.)

I can’t write about my family because they’re cool and give me free rent and free food.

I can’t write about capitalists because of my newfound materialism.

I could write about politics but I’m too lazy to educate myself about presidential candidates. Besides, politics makes me incoherently angry; there’s no way I can write a political commentary without peppering my sentences with expletives.

I could write about being happy and how sweet my boyfriend is and how awesome my friends are and how much money I’m making. But why would I want to do that? There’s no beauty in writing about how perfect your life is; that’s just you being an asshole.

Before I continue, I should like to add that I don’t expect any of my writing to make an impact on world events, people’s lives, or the state of Philippine literature, if blog-writing even counts as such (it probably doesn’t). I write for myself, I always have, and I don’t expect people to praise me for what I do. So when you’re a person who doesn’t have particularly high expectations of herself, and you find that you can’t write anything that meets your low standards, then you’re in trouble.

Do I have to be miserable to feel inspired to write and to like what I come up with? It’s starting to look like it. Come to think of it, I was a very prolific writer I graduated from college, with so many horror stories to tell from BPO hell. I honestly think that the stuff I came up with during that point of my life are the only entries worth reading in this blog. Maybe it wasn’t healthy that I seriously considered suicide as a viable option at the time, but at least I was creating something other than opportunities to increase my cash flow. God, I can’t believe I actually used the term “cash flow”. It makes me sound like such a boring adult. Is this what life does to people? I feel like I’m losing my imagination, and with it, myself.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not stupid enough to break up with my boyfriend or work for a BPO just so I can scratch out a few “inspired” lines on the old paper journal. I do kind of like being happy and I like how my life is going. I’m grateful for every good thing that happens to me and I don’t want any of it to change. But it doesn’t make me any less bothered by the fact that I’m apparently one of those people who have to be depressed to write. I don’t even understand why I’m making such a big deal out of this. Like I said, it’s not like I’m working on a novel or trying to make a contribution to literature or anything.