A friend who reads my blog, as a friendly favour I suspect, recently suggested to me that I should write more regularly. And I have taken his suggestion to heart quite seriously. So every evening I come back from work and scour cyberspace for some inspiration to take the shape of a decent post. But the strategy doesn’t seem to be working as intended.

Sometimes its the phone calls or messages of dear friends and even parents. Sometimes its the sheer mental fatigue of the workday. Sometimes its the real lack of ideas. And often-times its the drunkenness! Any tips/remarks/comments, well-meaning or otherwise are most definitely welcome!

This has always been a problem with me – give me something to do as a hobby, a pastime to be indulged in according to my whims and fancies and you will never find me lacking in spirit and enthusiasm. But the moment it becomes, or in this case self-imposed into being, an obligation, a job – I seem to fail. A case in point would be my profession – my profile right now very much involves coding, which I enjoy as an interest, though I am not too abreast of the myriad modern technologies and platforms. As a hobby, I taught myself html, php and perl. I used a bit of what I learnt for my work as well. But when that becomes a role I am supposed to fulfill I seem to be completely at a loss.

My friend’s suggestion made me think about The Waste Land and its future course. I thought I will be more frequent, writing about things that interest me and maybe in due course attract a decent readership and can find ways to monetize this blog. I follow a few blogs and have seen this happen a decent number of times to believe in the possibility, however remote. The truth is I am so sick of my job and so paranoid about the economic crisis that I keep hearing of at least three and a half times every day, that I will try anything as an alternate career choice.

I have thought about applying to companies in my field of work. But every time I sit down to write a resume, it becomes such a depressing affair, that I give up one-tenth of the way. I have no big lines to write since I do not think much of my last nine years of a career. I have just rode on a wave that has taken me places but seems too dangerously close to a shore where it will all come crashing down. 

I have also thought about becoming a journalist or a teacher. The thing with the first one is that I once went for an interview for a copy-editor at Indonesia’s only English newspaper. It didn’t work out, and the people who know me will vouch for the fact that I give up too easily. About pedagogy, I have always been keen and somewhere deep inside I do believe I have a gift. But I am, what I believe only Singaporeans have a term for, kiasu – afraid to lose! So sticky notes after sticky notes of to-do lists enlist my honest intention of someday making a teaching resume and shooting it off to the Ministry of Education of Singapore. “Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines“, or multi-coloured entries on yellow sticky notes. (The quoted line is from Pink Floyd’s Time.)

So the future does seem uncertain, and The End is no where as near as Jim (Morrison) would have you believe! And as you have guessed, the point behind this meaningless blabbering is that I have nothing to write this evening!

And the story continues…