This blog started because I had so many things to talk about but had no one to talk to.
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When the entire world was placed on lockdown in March 2020, I was restless. Without the hours-long commutes, the daily conundrum of where to eat lunch, the weekly Friday night drinks and Saturday morning hangovers, I found myself having to fill those in with isolation-friendly activities. Morning and evening commutes were replaced with extra hours in bed. Lunch was never a mystery because it usually entails reheating last night's leftovers. And I was happy to trade the night outs and subsequent hangovers with binge-watching movies and TV shows, spending the next morning sleeping in because there was no need for alarms.
I had so much time on my hands, not being wasted on waiting lines and hellish traffic. Without realizing it, I was glued to my phone and my laptop in a way I never thought I'd be. There were so many things we can do safely in our own little bubble. Now, we have the time to do it.
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I started consuming a lot of information from different places, sometimes, all at once. I can be watching a movie while scrolling through Instagram or reading an article while listening to a podcast. I even take my phone with me in the bathroom and scroll through Tiktok until my legs go numb and they'd be imprinted with red circles from where my elbow sat. I don't start showering until I have the perfect playlist cued up or have MacGyvered makeshift phone holders out of toothpaste tubes and soap dispensers so I can casually rewatch Modern Family for the nth time.
So when I thought of starting this blog because "I had so many things to talk about but had no one to talk to" I was wrong about two things.
1. I don't have so many things to talk about.
Of course, theoretically, there are an infinite number of things to talk about (the concept of infinity itself is one of them) but the thing is, how do I choose which one? I believe that we don't have to be experts on things to be able to talk about them but I maintain that we should at least have something to say about them.
Sure, I'm not a physicist or a mathematician but I can, of course, talk about infinity if I want to, but what do I say? Can I at least offer a new perspective? Not even to explain the concept but maybe a humorous observation about it being the ultimate opposite of nothing?
I digress.
2. There are so many people to talk to.
I found myself reconnecting with friends through zoom calls and virtual catch-up sessions. The friends I weren't able to meet because of differences in schedules were now one meeting link away. But those conversations can be exhausting. Not because they are exhausting to talk to but it just feels like a knock-off version of what an actual hangout would feel like.
So while there are plenty of people to talk to, I don't really want to talk to them. At least, not for three hours online and certainly not ALL THE TIME. I can usually only do one social call a week max but even then I'd still be relieved when one of us eventually cancels.
While I was wrong about having an excess of things to talk about and not having anyone to talk to, the opposite is less comforting: there are a few things to talk about but I just don't want to talk about them and apparently, I don't even want to write about them either.
Here's an attempt to at least write about something.
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In trying to recall the era when our lives weren't filled with benign distractions, I remember how much I cherished my bathroom time. As I empty my bladder or take a shower, my head would wander aimlessly inside my own head.
I've had high school project ideas inspired by the toilet paper dispenser (don't ask) and learned new words as I read the ingredients on shampoo bottles. I've wondered whether soaps actually clean our bodies or were we simply contaminating the soap by transferring our dirt. I know there's a version of this idea involving a cockroach and I'm not claiming to be the first person to ever think about this but it's a vivid memory other people can't refute.
These thoughts were not gold but they were thoughts nonetheless and they were mine. So when I thought about the lack of any material to publish on the blog despite having taken thousands of showers in the era of the internet, I realized that I have become too passively preoccupied. Sometimes I feel like there's always one wonderfully weird thought brewing in me but I never get to hear it because my mind's too busy processing other things.
I know this is what meditation is supposed to help with but it's hard to meditate because the concept is both new age and ancient at the same time. Somehow, being in front of the screen all the time is a lot better than wallowing in stillness and the quiet.
I've taken this to the extreme though and left no space for quietness at all and filled my time having things to look at or listen to.
But as a creative person, always having things to occupy my visual and auditory spaces leaves little room for other things like thoughts that are genuinely my own. Being on Netflix and Spotify at every hour of every day is not conducive for anything creative. Sure I get to watch other people's creations but I don't get the time to do anything myself.
I think this all boils down to one thing: I miss having epiphanies.
Soap cleaning and toilet papers are not by any means profound concepts but at least I had the time and the quietness to have them and explore them in the first place.
I also don't blame technology or the internet for this because while they do curate my online experience to compel me to stay on their platforms, I still have the ultimate power to override my doom-scrolling tendencies.
So here's a rather long-winding, sort of pointless blog entry in an attempt to talk about something and pretend that I have someone to talk to.
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