Word Vomit- 1000 words in 15 minutes, unedited.
Alright it’s 11:35pm and strangely my mind is starting to go to mush. I know that my productivity phase is past, and yet if I allow myself to, I can sit and stone online for the next 5-6 hours, and then ruin tomorrow. This shouldn’t happen, I should break the pattern. So I’m starting by turning off everything and coming back to writing. This is going to be my therapy, my meditative practice, my center. When all else fails I will return to this center, finish it, feel accomplished and then do what needs to be done.
My biggest source of frustration and anxiety is unfulfilled commitments. Broken promises. When I say I’ll do something and I don’t do it. I’m 22 years old now, I cannot live well if I do not become a man of my word. So I guess that should be my main goal above all, if any- to keep my word. To do that I need to cobble together a simple habit of getting things done. To do that, I need to start with small tasks. Baby steps. Today, the tasks are to finish writing this, and to go to bed with a calm mind, and to wake up as early as possible tomorrow to begin the day fresh.
What else- I already talked about how amusing it was to read my old post about me being amused to read about my old posts, right? There’s that element of recursiveness at play, and that recursiveness surely exists to tell us something. (Well, nothing exists for any particular purpose, but there is a learning experience buried in there that we could potentially unravel.)
Earlier in the evening I felt an impulse to play a game. Like, to download Vice City or something and to play it. I ended up playing a couple of rounds of solitaire, and managed to stop myself afterwards. What is it about games that is so compelling, and how do we engineer our lives to take advantage of the game mechanics? Compelling question.
I’ve been drinking lots of water, that feels great. I’ve been collating my 90 weeks experiment posts- I’ve been deleting the old posts and transcribing everything into Microsoft Word, summarizing, cannibalizing, keeping what is useful and trashing the rest. I don’t have time or space (cognitive) to keep track and romanticize things, I trust that I will come up with better things in the future- even more so now that I’m building (or rebuilding) this ability to generate vast amounts of content. If you can write tonnes, you can afford to throw away tonnes, too, and have faith that there will be gems to be unearthed. There’s no doubt in my mind about that.
I participated in a sleep study a couple of days ago- did I talk about this? I spent all night reading Anti-Fragile by Nassim Taleb. I still haven’t finished the book, but I made pretty good progress. I really like it. He has some great ideas and beautiful phrases- my personal favourite was “we often confuse catalysts for causes”. I was thinking “Catalysts For Causes” would be a great name for a band, or an album…
which brings me to thinking about how I often feel like there’s a gap in Singaporean music and literature, there’s something that’s not being said. Nobody seems to be expressing what it is to think and ruminate about life in a balanced and fun way- you either get extremely oddball philosophical “weirdonizm” or you get simple saccharine pop/rock that has no character. There’s no middle ground. I feel the same way about a lot of things. Steve Jobs struck that balance between designer and techie, and he created huge value there- by combining two seemingly unrelated fields and areas of interest to create something magical. Who knew artists would care about hardware, or that tech geeks would care about artfulness? Well, Jobs felt that they ought to, and he distorted reality to make it happen.
I kinda want to do that. I’m still talking about instead of doing it, and sooner or later I’m going to have to jump into the sea and figure out how to swim. For now, I still do have things on my mind.
I want to be taken more seriously as a blogger and I want to reach out to a broader audience at the same time. I don’t believe that I need to compromise and go one way or the other, I sincerely believe that there’s a missing market waiting to be discovered, created, filled. I want to actively work towards becoming one of the most well-known bloggers in Singapore. I don’t want fame for fame’s sake, I want to direct people’s attention to get them to think about being thoughtful and compassionate. I notice that I get a lot more resposnes and attention when I talk about Singaporean politics and media, so I will make it a habit to write about that at least a few times a week. I also notice that I get some really heartfelt responses from JC students or NSFs- in response to my reflections about my own life- so I think I’m going to write about that, too.
In the ultra long run I’d like to speak at schools about how to survive in an unforgiving system that doesn’t care about you, how to find meaning and fulfillment. I’d like to reach out to students who feel squashed and constricted. I’d like to build entire communities- or at least, plant the seeds from which communities should grow- that get people thinking about how to be more kind, more gracious, more loving. I’d like to influence people to queue up for public transport, to put away their trays, to smile at one another and to say hello. These are the things that I want to achieve.
I feel like there’s a gap in the Singaporean market for Singaporean stories. A friend pointed out to me that Singaporean writers who write Singaporean Literature tend to fixate on Singapore a little too much- they obsess with being Post-Colonial, trying a little too hard to focus their lens on Singaporean issues. It can be a little trite, tiresome and frankly, boring. I’m a little ignorant and uninformed on these matters, and I would love to be schooled on this. Please hook me up with any good Singaporean fiction you know of. Xie xie ni.
Anyway, there’s a gap. Where’s our 50 Shades of Grey, where’s our Twilight? (Now I’m thinking of writing Singaporean versions of those stories… LOL. Maybe I should. I already did a Singaporean version of To Be or Not To Be, I’m not interested in making a dent in academia, I’m not interested in having my work analysed for its cultural significance or anything like that. I want to write something that Singaporeans find interesting, amusing, insightful, and, of course, “unputdownable”. (Wow, did you know that unputdownable is now a word? I typed it out and there’s no red squiggly underline underneath it.) What would you write about, if you were challenged to do that?
I remember Adrian Tan’s The Teenage Textbook was pretty unputdownable. It was a simple, somewhat superficial story, but it served its purpose- it was readable, breezy and rather funny, and it did have multiple elements of Singaporean identity in it. It wasn’t particularly heavy, and it won’t make you contemplate your existence or anything like that, but it was a good read. Where are the good Singaporean reads? Where’s the fiction? Perhaps it exists but I’m just not aware of it. It most likely does exist. I am sorry for my ignorance. It would be fatally conceited of me to assume that just because I don’t know about it, it doesn’t exist.
I know there was a writer called Tay something something who wrote Singaporean stories. There’s always True Singaporean Ghost Stories. Bookworm Club. Mr Kiasu. Catherine Lim’s stuff. Angsana productions.
Harry Potter. The Da Vinci Code. Goosebumps. (RL Stein). Anne Rice. Stephen King. Robert Cormier. Pahlaniuk. Gaiman. Google the bestsellers. Lord Of The Rings. Perks of Being A Wallflower. Life of Pi. Murakami. Hunger Games. Avatar Spirit Bender. How I Met Your Mother. Friends. Seinfeld. Frasier. Boston Public. Whose Line Is It Anyway. Mr Bean. LIMITLESS. Inception. Avengers. Iron Man. Growing Up. Under One Roof. VR Man. Phua Chu Kang. Jodi Picault, Nicholas Sparks. (Eat. Pray. Love.) Love and other drugs. The Dark Knight.
Account of everything- music you listen to, people you come across, little experiences. guy looking at starbucks. little epiphanies about several issues. train of thought behind how you are inclined towards a certain perspective. similarities, motivations, why didn’t you explore other things. beating yourself up about smoking. what is special isn’t so special. fictional character.
coffeeshop table. perspective of the table and chair. feeling the history of the place. VS. wear the uniform. you’re a part of something greater than yourself.
okay interrogate everybody about this.