Journal of a Lockdown No. 25

Old house-turned-restaurant in Quezon City that I had stumbled upon while walking alone last year. I miss walking around. 

I'm running out of things to write about but intend to keep writing daily for the whole duration of the Lockdown which, I understand, will likely be extended. The evidence seems to point to that end: more time apart will lead to a better flattening of the curve. I'm not sure what it's doing to my curves, on a personal level. When I gain weight (and I've been snacking in between meals to pass time, since my brother loves the Spanish bread from the neighborhood panaderia), the first manifestation is an increased abdominal girth. I can feel my flabs now.

I had some technical writing done, watched a few episodes of Money Heist (or "La Casa De Papel," its Spanish title, which my friend Mervyn has been egging me to watch since our last Bangkok trip), and a restful afternoon nap that brought me to a kind of floating consciousness when I woke up. Sleep has been catching up on me (or I have been catching up on sleep--whatever! I love it, either way, as long as I'm caught), as if my body is eagerly compensating for the lack of sleep of years past.

I've effectively, but not completely, detached myself from social media. If I need to know something, my friends will tell me about it or it will be the topic of discussion of my chat groups. I get my dose of verified news from legitimate media sources. I subscribe to the New York Times Morning Briefing newsletter and to Jason Kottke's Noticing for curated news articles and other miscellaneous items. I sometimes post on Twitter but mostly assume the role of a quiet lurker. I check my feed once in a while, but I don't stay there for long. It has become like Facebook: an angry, angsty place full of people with opinions on every issue. But that's Freedom of Speech for you, the hallmark of a healthy democracy. Everyone has a right to self-expression: yes, even student writers for their school papers. That also means I have the right to step away.

My advice to people in general is that they start a blog if they need to express themselves more fully. Or write in a notebook. I do both. Writing allows me to process my thoughts more fully. During my quiet times, I write down passages of Scripture with a good fountain pen. Blogging, too, has done wonders for me. And not just during the lockdown. It has provided me a sweet spot--the proverbial best of two worlds--between publicly sharing my life and preserving my privacy. I love that this website is largely unknown to much of the world. The traffic has markedly decreased through the years, and my readership has been reduced to lurking friends who occasionally write comments or email me. Some of these emails contain corrections to my grammar, suggestions to improve my sentence construction, and mostly encouragements and kamustahan. Haven't I been blessed with an amazing readership*?

Thank you, dear friends, for sticking it out with me for these past years.

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*I'm not sure if readership is the right word, as it alludes to a huge audience when the fact is that the constant blog readers can fit nicely in a small kindergarten room.