Where have I been?

I slipped.

I was recently overwhelmed by changes in my life. Work has been busy was a very convenient excuse I had for myself. I stopped visiting the gym, I didn't watch my diet, I didn't follow any of my plans of routine, I slept late, and I was procrastinating. My health took a hit. For a good 3 weeks I was having headache, bodyaches, and fever on and off. Again, convenient excuse for myself, I was feeling stressed. I slipped into a vicious cycle of pain, discomfort, procrastination, and doing things that ain't important just to tell myself that I deserve all these time to relax. The only thing that I was keeping up with was work, because money don't fall from the sky.

I was doing things that I shouldn't be spending that much time on but I did it anyway to make myself feel a little better. I took every little win I can. I should be writing more on these blog because this was what I used to enjoy doing. I wouldn't call myself a writer because I was never good at it as a kid. I still remember why I start this blog years ago. Because I wanted to improve my writing and also to pen down some of my thoughts and crazy ideas. I planned it so that at that point, my unborn unconceived children can read it in the future to me when I'm all grey and lost my memories. Yes, just like in The Notebook.

But I got distracted. I never really admitted that I am a blogger back in the days until I actually won a blog award some years ago. The term blogger always gave me a bad taste in the mouth especially those I've seen, heard, met in Singapore especially. More often than not these guys can't write, do not have any special skill or insights to share and neither do they have really interesting stories nor good images. I was jaded by the industry. What started most people like myself to write was nothing more than an online diary where we just go on about ranting about our lives. Things eventually took a turn no thanks to marketeers. Ironically, I am one of them. Inevitably, and as much as I hated it, that was where the industry was shifting to. Using bloggers to promote products. I can't deny the fact that this platform has made and broke many individual but this is what evolution is all about. Things change and we have to keep up with times. Sadly, many has hopped onto the bandwagon for fame, money, or even as pathetic as for the sake of scoring some freebies. And by now, the term blogger is already passe, the more current term is probably influencer. To be honest, I feel even more uncomfortable with this term. It's like a makebelieve term to make yourself feel good and tbh, that's not me man, all I ever wanted was to write and share. My intention was never to be someone famous.

Why am I telling you this? Because what started as a personal diary for myself was affected as well. I started to write things that I think people are interested to read, I started writing articles with keywords that make my content more searchable. I was affected by the fact that some better written blogs doesn't get as much attention as compared to some asswipes out there who simply write for the sake of commercial purposes. I'm not apologetic about my French here. I contemplate on what type of content I should write. I want to share more about my personal life but yet on the other hand I thought it's not as good a story. I was caught in a funk. I stopped myself from writing every time I feel like I should write something,

I read it somewhere before,

"Do what you love, and you’ll never work another day in your life." 

but when I was a teenager, a comic book store owner too told me something when I told him that it's so cool that he is following his dream of selling comics,

"Never make your hobby a job, because very soon you will be left with no hobbies." 

Like I said, I was never a good writer growing up, and my grammar ain't exactly the best. I love art but I never thought I would go into photography. I probably made a mistake making this "talent" and "hobby" of mine into a job. I'm not regretting for sure, I still love my job but I can't say the same for my hobby. I'm so obsessed with the crafts that I can no longer just snap anything random and upload or just write anything silly to publish. I would tell myself that it's not good enough a piece or something along the lines that 'would these work actually hurt my professional image?"

So what inspired me to write this post?

Californication.

I was browsing through Netflix and I saw this show. I watched a few episodes and I was inspired. Not by the fact that there are lots of naked attractive ladies in the show but by the fact that it talks about a washed out writer who was trying to fix his life. I mean comparing what I'm going through to what he went through, I'm not even close.

What put me into writing again was the fact that he too ended up writing a blog and his narrative was rather personal and yet at the same time interesting to read. He reminded me that a blog is a continuous narrative of someone's life and thoughts. Not just about what good food is available out there or reporting a trending topic. Of course, that was in 2007 because that was when the show was made. Things change and sadly blogs ain't just that no more.

For those who are not aware, I manage unscrambled.sg. I spend most of my writing mojo reporting and writing stories on that site. Disclaimer – I love writing for unscrambled. I love that the platform allows me to write stories that ain't as personal for my own site, but it's just that I just do not have the focus to write anything on my blog thereafter. I'm so used to writing stories of others that I lost the ability to write my own, not until I stumble upon Californication.

I guess that's serendipity for me.

It's about time for me to be back here and start writing my own stories again.

Good news is that I feel so much better and feel like I'm back in a better place after my short 3-day trip in Genting. I must say I am very impressed with the newly renovated place. To be honest, I've no idea how "newly" renovated it is since the last I visited was actually almost a good 5 years ago.

In case you didn't really like this post, here's Red Hot Chili Peppers' Californication.