So it's a new year and I've been trying this thing out where I don't write what I want to attempt doing this year, mostly to see what it's like to start a year off without any expectations of myself, and I have to say, I don't like it.
Turns out, when I don't write down things I want to try and fail at doing, I do something even worse than that: nothing. And noticing that I'm doing nothing is usually the first step towards me doing something, but in this instance, since I haven't clearly delineated what I want to get done, I just sit there and stare into the middle distance, being fuddled by what I'm thinking, or even what I'm supposed to be thinking about.
It’s like floating around in a body of water. Floating is relaxing and everything, but you’re never really going anywhere, not on purpose, anyway. And then when I get a panic attack about not going anywhere, I have nowhere to paddle to, since I didn’t set a course for anywhere in particular. So not knowing where to paddle to puts me into more of a panic, and I still get nothing done. And that sucks.
If I write down what I want to do, at least I can float in that body of water with knowledge of where I’m supposed to be paddling. So even if I’m not paddling, I at least know in which direction I want to go. And when I panic about not doing anything or not going anywhere, I’ll know what I need to do to remedy the situation.
So I guess this post is about what I want to (fail to) do in the immediate future, so that I don't feel like I'm the worst, most good for nothing person in the world.
Write, record and edit the final two book review videos from last year.
I've already finished reading one of the books, and I'm halfway through the second one (and I'm only a year too late). I've been putting them off because the first book is the first one in my doing the reviews where I have been struggling to find anything to like about. The second one is alright, but because I haven't written and recorded the first one yet, I feel guilty for continuing to read it (tapi tengok netflix tak rasa guilty plak Anwat?) . I shall write and record the videos, finish reading the final book and make the video for that one too, and then probably retire from doing the book reviews for a while and focus on reading the international books that I have been ignoring for the longest time pulak.
Start writing a fictional zine.
I have had this idea for a collection of five fictional stories in my brain for a while now. As usual, I haven't started writing it yet out of fear that it might turn out to be sucky. My brain keeps lying to me by saying "hey, writing nothing is better than writing something bad," which is completely false. Writing something bad is miles better than writing nothing. As writers day, a bad page can be fixed, a blank page cannot. So I just have to hunker down and knock those five sucky stories out and edit them later.
Learn more about scriptwriting.
It's definitely something I want to do in the future. I just don't know how it's done. Some would say, "la, just write lah!" and that's fair. But writing for the screen is a craft all its own, I feel like, and there are certain sensibilities and techniques that go beyond the ones needed for writing blogposts in order to write good ones. So I think it's worth learning about.
So those are probably the things I want to get done in the immediate future. Now, I shall proceed to ignoring to do all these thing, while feeling good about myself that I have planned my immediate future out. "I have stuff to do, I'm a busy boy," I can tell myself while listening to podcasts and watching a Netflix documentary I really don't need to watch.
Here’s to living life on purpose.
Cheers.
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