what makes me a good scribbler

“If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead, either write something worth reading or do things worth writing”. - Benjamin Franklin

It takes great passion to be a good writer, more than a fraction for career, more than holding a huge pile of vocabulary in your IQ system and more than just putting words into pieces for it to form a suitable sentence. First, I have to disclaim that I am nowhere near to declare myself a writer. I think I’m just a frustrated amiable writer-ish of my own diary where I place it in the internet for maybe one or two bored beings to read. Writing has always been my love, my dream and a past time. I write everywhere, even on the desks of my classrooms way back college (not that I graduated that long already), and no, I didn’t just post in the cyber world that when I get bored I vandalize my desks with some weird words with drawings to match.

If it weren’t for Typhoon Sendong, I’d probably embarrass myself by posting some of my written creations back when I was in 2^nd grade. I’d put together pieces of bond paper and staple them together and write short stories of whatever I could just imagine about. One time, I wrote about a Cinderella-ish story, maybe changing the plot here and there and changing the names of the main characters. Yes, at 8 years old I’m proud to say I have made maybe a dozen of fan-fiction materials written on pieces of paper and let my classmates read it. I even shamelessly put borrowing cards at the back of my so-called books and let them pay penalties if they don’t return it on time. HAHAHA! Oh my God I can’t even imagine how crazy I was back then, I mean, I was that brave when I was in grade school, with my scruffy handwriting and unforgivable drawing skills, at least some of my classmates were interested in it, unwillingly at least.

Then my Mom bought me my first diary which had a lock on it. She told me to write anything on it, containing all the significant events of my day and just whatever I wanted to write. And boy did I write A LOT. I ended up buying more diaries even until high school, all about my day, my teachers, my Mom scolding me for being too hard headed, my Dad not complaining about my early impulsive buying skills on toys and junk food, my crush/ES, where we were traveling, or eating my favourite food, reading a new book, watching my favourite cartoons, joining a new club, winning a medal from a tournament, gained a new best friend, fought with a frenemy, all the usual drama of a girl engaging in puberty, then I had my boyfriend, and yes I did write about him, which ended up to writing love letters instead. Then the spurt of a new social networking site halted all the drama my diaries couldn’t bear to witness anymore. It was Friendster.

I could remember all those silly pictures of me holding the camera way above your head and smile while tilting your head down in a silly way (sorry, I know people still do that today) and put that up as your profile picture. EEW. I hadn’t notice that coming. Then the writing language like this: “I am zooo blezzed with mah frendzzz. I lav dem zoooow matz!” sometimes even writing testimonials or birthday greetings like “hap33y burthdae fwend! G0d blezz yoooh”. But it didn’t stop there, it also infested through the new blog site where you could post not more than 200 photos in an album wherein Friendster I think it was only up to 20 or 50. The site’s name was Multiply. Yes, my shameless jejemon language even grew more there too plus more peace signs and wearing of sunglasses inside malls to pose for a snapshot.

Then the birth of Facebook came which buried Friendster to the grave far too easy (which is now a gaming site FYI).  It was already in college when this site took control of the internet so maybe I did bury my jejemon writing skills with Friendster too. I never really realized how “baduy” I really was that even with texting my Mom couldn’t understand what I was talking about. How foolish could I get? Of course here came Tumblr and Twitter, two more social networking sites I utilize so much. Tumblr’s my friend since it allowed me to post whatever it was I wanted to post about plus reblog pretty pictures from other Tumblr users. Twitter was a different story. It allowed me to fart my brain for everyone to see, not realizing how much a social hazard it was since some people take your tweets way too seriously. It taught me to keep my cyber mouth shut and screen my tweets to avoid regretting what I posted.  

With Tumblr, it put my writing skills back to challenge. This time, not for my own amusement but to share to the world what I wanted for them to see, taking me to a challenge to pursue writing which I thought died on the margins of my books and notebooks. Sharing an event here and there and several brain farts that, again, maybe one or two people might have noticed which almost turned into my online diary which I realized was a social network hazard. You can never put too much information about you in the internet. That’s just like so wrong. Then again, I sometimes can’t help myself. I’m really talkative in person and in internet. And by talkative I don’t mean gossipy but in a friendly and FC kind of way.

Now, I’m currently working for an online magazine which for me was a huge leap from the scrutiny of my notebooks and diaries. I get to write about real people and real events that many people will read about. It made me realize how much practice I really needed. In the middle of my agonizing Nursing life, I wanted to shift to Journalism because I wanted to be like Bianca Gonzales perhaps, a sought-after icon of the youth who I find is a responsible journalist. Seen on TV and newspapers writing feature editorials of personalities this country is really fond of. But of course I continued Nursing and thank Heavens I eventually survived the battle of duties and exams.

Maybe in everything we do in life, we will constantly learn about it. We will never be experts in what we do because we should always take it as a challenge to learn something new about it. For me, writing has always been my love. I am not good at writing, I never mentioned it anywhere that I was, I just love it as much as I love reading about anything, either from books, newspapers, magazines, blogs or tweets, I always find pleasure in learning something new. Though I may be a grammar and diction nazi, please do spare me sometimes for the mistakes I do when I write. Aren’t we all humans born to make and correct mistakes? Hihihi :o)

I think I’ve never written anything this long. It happens when you’re bored and maybe a little inspired. So, how about you? What was one thing you always loved to do since you were young and continue to try to pursue now? A penny for your thoughts, yes?