Ancient Memories. Still funny.

Because I'm flying back to Toronto soon, and after I heard that the E.D. of the place I used to work at was leaving, I thought of posting this old picture taken in one of those office events.

It's in the public gallery, anyways, so it's very public.

Memories of working 9 to 5 are so ancient to me. But waking up early and working/writing are so fresh that I look forward enthusiastically to each new day.

I read a funny story in one of the popular blogs this afternoon. It is so eerily familiar that I thought I was reading my story. It's one of those moments when you think everything is about you, and you hear yourself say, not everything is about you.

Imagination brings happy feeling.

Impediment to Creativity.

Professional writers and those who profess to be good at writing devote substantial amount of time to researching what they write.  They also confess to needing private time and quiet when they write.

When I decided to semi-retire and to seek self-employment, I went back to creative writing which is my first love and my very first source of income upon graduation from university studies.

Writing in itself is a creative adventure. There are the journalists, fiction and non-fiction writers, technical writers, creative writers such as copywriters, screen, radio and television scriptwriters, speech or ghost writers, and column writers and opinion writers.

I used to write copy or adverstisements for a PR and ad agency.

Now, I do mostly blog writing or private work.

Having just arrived from a two-month travel in Canada and the U.S.A, I am still experiencing jet lag - including creative lag.  My mind is pointless - err... I cannot pinpoint the exact beginning or end of a topic, and I think it is due to the heat wave going on.

When I'm out of the air conditioned bedroom and infront of the computer in the living room, it is not creative juice that is flowing out of me, but sweat.

When I write, I want to be by myself - thus, I tend to write late in the evening or early morning.  If there are people snooping around, I tend to clam in.  

I remember years and years ago when my boss would call for a brainstorming session to kick start an ad campaign for a client and the team members would remain silent. My boss would then light a cigar (smoking was still allowed in buildings and offices then) and start to whistle.  Then we would catch up with his good mood, and everyone would ease up and the ball would start to roll.

During brainstorming sessions, general concepts are formulated, but it is in the privacy of offices that creative writers develop the actual copy or ad - print, radio and TV.

If people around would just understand that certain people function best when they are left alone, life would be much easier...for writers.

I can't write. You can read and write.

I will admit it, I can't write; the thoughts I want to tell simply won't come out the way I intend them to be.

Frustrating. When I read past blogs or recent blogs, I suddenly realize how various interpretations could come out of them. I want to say this and that, but it just comes out the opposite. Believe it.

Real writers and good writers have this knack for vocabulary, experience (real or imagined from reading a lot of lit ) and style.

Maybe if I became a lawyer, I would have written countless briefs - and they would have come out brilliant because they'd be based on facts and logic. But creative writing is something else; so is blog writing.

Blog writing is personal. Thousands write just to vent out, reach out, search and be searched. And creative writing is an arena of just a chosen few.

I am enjoying right now the natural breeze here in a Sucat condo complex; the pool is blue and clear, I just had a hearty breakfast of rice, bangus and chicken, I had a wonderful evening dancing out - but my heart craves just to read... so I bought a hard copy of Philstar. Then I logged on to a favorite blog. It makes my day.

Believe it. Simple things can fill to the max the veins of the life machine - the heart.

Like the other day, I checked the National Bookstore at a nearby mall, and discovered how run down and messy the books that were for sale. I was looking for this Bicycle Diaries - NBS Sucat SM didn't have it.

Where I am and where I've been - there are simply no wild creatures. Or if there had been some, I've banished them into extinction. 

The only thing wild are the waves in the China Sea where Pepeng is probably headed.

I want to have dinner. Yes? 

Lutong Makaroon.

I remember one time getting a not so pleasant reaction from something I wrote eons ago, from my Boss. She hated it and told me to get lost.

Working in a creative department meant having to translate market research data into attention-getting print, radio and television ads. It meant 15 seconds, tops 2 minutes, of a consumer's time. Not too much time to make pa-cutsey ads and maybe too much for a very hard sell.

A lot of times, clever copies are not easily understood or do they get registered in the minds in 15 seconds. So much so if one's mind is awashed in pain killers.

Lately, even my dinner(s) have not sunk into my stomach either. Either too much flavouring, colours, dollar signs, or maybe it was not meant to be served to me.

How to go about serving great dinner? Prepare carefully. And as the female character of Mike Myers would say in a Saturday Night Live sketch (SNL) ... discuss.

POETRY - Pixels in Monitor

Ocean, seas and lake
Mountain, valleys, what more peaks?
Oy, to break one’s heart.

Distance and spaces
Such chasm between bodies,
Close the gap, oh how?

Living in your time,
Moving within your portals,
Pixels, what display!