My profession demands that I write every day—and no, I am not a professional writer. In fact, I am a quantity surveyor: I write contractual letters, draft narratives for reports, and write concise descriptions on a spreadsheet to ensure the bill item conveys the correct work scope, so it merits proper pricing. My line of work also restricts me from using adjectives and adverbs when writing. I do this routine from six in the morning until six in the evening with a two-hour midday break, and 15-minute tea breaks allocated in the morning and in the afternoon. Since I work in a contracting environment, I work six days a week, repeating the whole semi-robotic regimen. It is maddening, and it can burn me out sometimes. Then I took solace in my old passion, which was writing and all the intangible pleasures and pains that go with it.
I started writing at a young age. My mother, a history teacher, taught me journal writing: at first, mimicking sentences from what I read, checking verbs from the pocket dictionary which she gave me for my birthday, then later on, no thanks to her witty teaching skill, writing back chain letters.
When my parents broke up, I tried writing letters to convince my Papa to reconsider his action to no avail. Although I had experienced muse earlier before that event, the darker side of inspiration influenced me to grab the pen and paper so I could record these unexpected changes in my personal journals.
Writing was helpful not only for the soul but also in practical trivial things: my school essays seemed sound as it received satisfactory grades; I wrote love letters to girls and similar declarations of unrequited love as requested by friends who could not express themselves in writing. My writing improved, and it landed me a position to write articles in a school newspaper during high school and a technical newsletter in college.
I wish I could have taken a career in writing but the dire circumstances of my family require that I pursue a career that will employ my other skills to bring home the bacon (literally). Despite a career that requires mathematical reasoning, life doesn’t seem to have any recession of irony as my tasks (still) entailed writing. Writing in the form of scribing meeting minutes for the Lords (construction managers) as if I were some Maester in Game of Thrones and composing narratives for reports but with restriction—no adjectives and adverbs! My personal journal was the only haven for my creative narratives—biding time just like the way Sauron’s ring hibernated for 2,000 years in the River Anduin.
When I first heard of blogging, I doubt whether I can do it. I was not confident in a lot of things. All I knew is that I can write well whenever my boss asked me to write something: effective emails, straight-to-the-point letters, and the flat narratives of claim documents.
Like Hemingway, I travel–not for pleasure–but to work in various countries as my profession is dependent where there were construction projects: from inspiring ones to the depressing remote ones. The experience exposed me to a lot of muses and musings. Experience that I just kept to myself—drafts imprinted in my heart that I intend to publish only when I feel it was time.
Then one day, while sipping my tea for the nth time, I became fed up. I needed to write something else other than work. Musings kept on coming—it was overflowing—and I could no longer contain them in the cerebral archives of my mind.
I believe that all writers find satisfaction just knowing that at least someone read their work. To satiate that pretentious desire to write, I took an unorthodox approach through a quasi-self-publishing pathway using the most basic of features of social media platforms: I posted my experiences in prose form instead of just posting photos of selfies, posted notes on anything, 50-word fiction, and just a few months back (finally), a blog. Like Tolkien, I am revisiting old journals now and then to recall materials to transcribe them into fiction—hoping someday that the effort yields a novel or equivalent compendium of stories of sorts.
Like all writers, I suffer rejection as seeing no likes on your social media posts and the low stats in my blog were no different to having a full manuscript being rejected by a publisher. But I kept on writing: I was fed up of those past years of not writing what I wanted to write, ignoring muse when its very existence made me happy, retreating to journals only when in pain.
I still have a few good years left. A career that manifests day-to-day hustle and bustle experiences, which are in fact stories on their own—one must only observe and write. Muse that keeps on chasing me wherever I go. The adventures will have endings like short stories, but the writing will continue the way Bilbo Baggins wrote his tale until his last days.
I know I am not alone in this kind of endeavor: it’s our very nature to aspire and overcome the mediocrity of being career dwellers and—regardless how clicheic it may sound—find meaning in this so-called journey called life. Even if nobody cared to read what I have written, I will still write: when I wake up in the morning, in the commute, when I’m irritated, when I feel miserable, and sometimes when I feel like a jolly good old fellow.
I write not because I’m fed up, but because writing makes me happy—my joie de vivre!
I am a quantity surveyor. But I am also a writer.
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