Eureka!

Last week, I was seized by a debilitating fear. I sat in front of my computer and stared at it for four days. For the first time in my life, I had nothing to say. Sure, I have my Kafkaesque moments, as often as I have my foot-in-the-mouth moments. I have always viewed myself as a verbally inept person unless I’m with close friends. Then I have verbal diarrhea.

So I typed and typed, and all I could come up with was an aseptic essay on friendship. No annoying tidbits of ditziness, no insights, just a hull of nothingness. It was sad and scary.

Steve Soderbergh, director of this generation’s seminal movies such as Sex, Lies and Videotapes and Traffic, once said in an interview that when he created a couple of flopsy movies, he was prostrated by the fear of not being able to do the only thing that he could do — which is to direct.

I feel the same way, although my articles qualify as literature only because they are words held together by a vague idea. Writing is one thing I love to do more than shopping. To momentarily lose that connection is like being caught by a boyfriend swapping spit with someone after having one-too-many cocktails.

I became very afraid and my stomach muscles curled, giving me a feeling of what I can only describe as durian — it’s indescribable. I mean, what does durian really taste like? I have asked friends this question and so far, no one has come up with a satisfactory answer. But before I wander off and babble about agricultural curiosities, back to my writer’s block. I found myself totally dry of words. Gone was the excitement that accompanied tapping on the keyboard as words flew fast and furious on the screen, my fingers could barely keep up.

Then I realized it’s been a year since I first started writing this column. I could barely believe it that it has been that long since I first handed my first piece with a doubtful mind and uneasy heart to my editor.

It’s hardly Pulitzer material, but writing this simple and hare-brained column every week, I had begun to see life as comedy, rather than just an interesting subject for study. I had always loved being tragic — from my anemic bank account to my neuroses-inducing, self-inflicted why-did-I-do-that episodes, all seen through an ARGENTO eye of gore. I used to think that I was a pathological pessimist, right until the time I was given the opportunity to go public with my thoughts. Now I realize I am plain pathological.

Writing this column has allowed me to see the lies I have offered myself and how my idealism sometimes contradicts who I really am. Discovering my imperfections has made me more capable of leading a real life. So this whole writing experience has served not only as a Freudian ditz cut version in understanding the self, but also an epiphany.

I started writing two years ago when I joined the staff of Teen Magazine under then editor-in-chief Ginggay Joven-de la Merced. I thought it was all fun and gloss until I was given responsibilities. I realized that beneath those candy-colored pages was really, and I mean really, hard and meticulous work. I flubbed big time. In a way, I can only equate how those drugged-out slackers in Trainspotting turned baby blue with hunger. The first time I was given the seemingly simple (I had no experience then) task of putting together a beauty editorial, I screwed up grand — like a moron with too much hair gel on her hair.

I went to the beauty supply stores the day before the shoot to pull out items to be photographed only to learn that a smile and a charmingly uttered "Can I borrow?" did not get the job done. So with fear and lunacy coming over me like a tsunami, I bought all the items needed and went on with the shoot with holes in my pockets similar to the earth’s ozone layer.

I kept this to myself until a few months later (when I thought it was safe), I finally admitted to Ginggay about my now hilarious slip. And this was only the beginning of my charm bracelet of misfortune of a career as beauty assistant of Teen Magazine. To this day, I still make mistakes that sensible people would never do. I’ve gotten used to leaping chasms of mishaps almost on a regular basis. Still, I love what I do and I can’t fathom doing anything else.

When I went to design school, all I could think about was going home and getting jiggy with my laptop. I quivered with the excitement of e-mailing my next article. That’s when I knew that this was the job for me. There is no greater source of gratification than making someone in Cebu smile, or making a connection with someone in Davao, or learning something new from someone in Camiguin (through e-mail).

I guess the gauge of knowing that you’re doing the right thing is when you do it not out of obligation, but out of love. Each day I learn more, thanks to my editor and colleagues in the office. Life, in itself, is a work in progress. And just because mistakes seem to dull the hues of the rainbow that color the future, it is the acceptance of defeat that calcifies the spirit deeming it vitiated. Just like that scar on Brad Pitt’s eyebrow, mistakes make life so much more compelling.

If there’s anything worse than screwing up, it’s being complacent and swimming in a sea of familiarity and safeness. This plateau is the grave marker of the spirit’s ability to create magic in a logic-loving world.

So screams and insults — welcome! Jump into my charmed world where the water’s warm.

As my friend Joel loves to say: "What doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger."