Compulsive

I checked my email this afternoon. Half expected as it is, there were a dozen of notifications from work. And all of those are added to a number of papers I have to work on with deadlines looming over the next two weeks. It seemed that I’m losing my sanity (if there’s any left) that I practically stared at my monitor for sometime. Did I blink? Yes, I did, for once or twice, I guess. But at that moment, I felt my mind floating… Then, I asked myself, “Why the hell are you doing this?”

It is the same question I asked myself when I started working a year ago. And it is the same question as well that others have asked me all throughout, whenever they found out that I do writing for a living. I’ve always given them the same answer. I do not do it for a living. I do it for a reason other than to put food down my system. That’s it. Most people would blurt out a follow-up question, a so and so remark, or make a strange face that spells something like, “Are you crazy?” I couldn’t care less. I guess my thing is my thing. I don’t give a damn if you think I’m crazy for doing such an arduous and headache-producing stuff. I earn bucks. And I’m perfectly happy to see the peso-dollar exchange rate higher. Again, I couldn’t care less for the economy. I mind my own economy.

But then, at times, I would find myself staring into nothingness and rethinking, asking myself the question again. It would go on, until I got tired of exploring reasons, even creating absurd ones just to justify it all. In the end, I would give up; go on hitting the letters on the keyboard again while my mind disposes out ideas like a factory. I would finish a six-page paper in about seven hours, do the bibliography and annotations, and send it to the company. My customer would get it in an hour; perhaps less if his credit card gets checked quickly. He would download it, print it, place the pages into a nice folder perhaps, and in a matter of time, it will land in his professor’s table or pigeonhole. I wonder what happens next… if I would be scorned by writing nonsense or I get rewarded for an articulate work. Most of the time it is the latter, for if it was the first then I couldn’t have been employed for the last 12 months.

I don’t know how long I’d be doing this. Until I graduate and get a career? I think so. The reason for doing this, for spending the days and nights reading and writing and acting as if I’m the one studying architecture or history in an American university just to get my mind working, will always be a good thing to ponder on. As for now, there’s only one thing I could think of and it seems a pretty good rationale, though surely an absurd one.

I’m a compulsive writer. Frustrated at one point, but I got the hang of it and now I can’t stop. I’m under the literary influence, that is.