Hi everyone, it’s the beginning of 2019. Happy New Year! It’s always unbelievable as to how fast time flies. Where did all the time go to? It reinforces that saying by Plato, ‘A life not examined is a life not worth living’. If you don’t reflect on what you done, can you truly grow?

I have been wanting to write this post for a long while now. It’s kind of a behind the scenes look at my writing and the inspiration for this year’s posts (only if you’re interested in that sort of thing). This blog probably still has the number of readers equivalent to the amount of people that use Friendster. Ha. But thank you for staying and reading anyway although I update infrequently, make unfunny jokes, and don’t notify you personally.

I’ve written quite a few the past year. More than I thought I would since I thought I will be hanging my keyboard up but life still surprises me (as it should) and so there are stories to be written.

Bright | Stars | Home | History | Two Eggs | Compass

In total, I wrote six posts last year. There was going to be a History Pt. 2 post, a piece about relationships and opportune time. About how in time, our previous romantic relationships, infatuation and crushes will become a memento that we carry with us. About how that bittersweet history becomes a beautiful memory. I don’t think I quite have all the ingredients for that one yet, so that will have to be in storage for now. One day, I probably will dust it off and finish the piece.

I think that’s the way I normally approach my blog writing. I have a lot of drafts. Like a lot. Most of the ideas never quite make it to the surface though because

1. The idea doesn’t have much room to grow into a piece. It can only serve two to three paragraphs at most.
2. I don’t have enough life experiences to lend the piece more substance. Otherwise, it’s very abstract and not grounded enough in reality, which makes it unrelatable.
3. I felt like I have written something similar before.

I think it’s very important that I feel strongly or passionate about what I write, and not just write it out of obligation or for popularity sake. In addition, I also want to write it well which requires patience. So more often than not, I wait for the idea to grow and only release it when it’s ready to fly. It could potentially lie in the cage for a few weeks or even months.

Bright was an example of that. I wanted to write it almost immediately when my girlfriend and I started dating. It goes without saying that the whole post was inspired by her. The trouble I had was connecting the introduction to the middle. It felt natural to start from the very beginning, from when I was first shy to how I got into a relationship. I could have done it linearly going from A to B but I felt it was very boring and there was too much to say to get from A to B (so much so that it would have been a piece itself) . I took a while to find the best vehicle to tell the story. In the end, I realised I had to take two steps back to make the leap forward. I revisited one of my post, A New Hope, to create the bridge from A to B. It captured the struggle I felt and at the same time, vindicated my hope and faith. Once I had that, the rest kind of just wrote itself.

Stars was something that came up because I thought one of the pieces I wrote a long time ago could be looked at again and be seen under a different light. Having written so much and growing older, it felt like the right time to self-reference my previous pieces and revisit them again. Terry Pratchett once said, ‘Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.’ Till today, I think I should have removed that Stephen Hawking quote at the very end for a more impactful ending but I still left it in there because it was what inspired the structure of the whole piece.

Once in a blue moon, I have a piece that can be written in one seating whereby you don’t have to think too hard about it and that inspiration just comes a little easier. Home was one of them. Having received permanent residency, I already have a cause and inspiration for writing. Coincidentally, I had a draft from a while back about the parallels between flight and life, in which I used my experience of my first flight as my opening. I thought it would be cool to use that as my opening here and just work my way through it chronologically as well. Again, this post was a long time coming as I often think about the impact of a nomadic shifting across cities on a person’s faith and character. So this was right up in that alley. This probably took 7 years in the making, as it finally sank in after much struggle and conflict that Sydney too is my home.

History was really one of the most challenging posts I had to write because I had so many directions I wanted to take with this and it was deeply personal. Initially, the idea I had for it was about accepting the past romantic relationships of oneself and others with grace and love but I didn’t quite know how to write that at the time because I felt I didn’t quite have a consolation from that reflection. If I had written it, it would have been very unsatisfying to the reader as it would have been like you read a story without a proper ending. One day, Kina Grannis released a song called, you guessed it, ‘History’ and after listening to it, I started thinking about the lyrics more and more. This last line of the chorus in particular resonated with me, ‘I’d rather be right here than falling off the pages of history’. It was such a beautifully composed song that I felt inspired to write my own acceptance of my history and how I came to grow from the tough pages.

The opening for History was an interesting one. If you read it, you will remember that I wrote about a Japanese clock. I have to admit this is one opening that I am pretty proud of just because I don’t think I have written a more beautiful analogy. Again, it wasn’t like I looked at the clock and went, ‘I got it’. The opening definitely took time (no pun intended) to be born. Because it was a clock and I am writing about history, it felt appropriate to link them. I don’t think I will ever know how exactly it came together. Like with any creative project, sometimes, all you need is a spark and the mind just connects things together.

The next one was Two Eggs. Keen observers will realise that this was the first time in the year that my title has more than 1 word, breaking the sort of plan that I had, which was to only have 1 word titles for 2018. I used to scratch my head a lot when I tried to think of titles and sometimes, come up with the weirdest things like Face of a Keyboard but I wanted to keep it uniform across the board and try to really capture the essence of the blog piece in one word. Two Eggs was never part of the plan but I realised there is a meaningful story about food to tell here and that was more important than any other plan. Why did I call it two eggs? It reminded me of younger days where two eggs was all I need in my meal. No fancy brunches. No fancy restaurants. Just eggs and rice.

Compass was something that came out of the blue and was written rather hastily in wanting to close the year off with something light but at the same time, raises questions to the reader (also because I haven’t written anything in donkey ages). In the article, I wrote about our over reliance on technology and reviews in going about our day but really, I was trying to convey that it is okay when your life compass breaks. Although things may seem impossible at times and we can get lost, we will be just fine. Breathe. Let go.

Eventually, you will get there. I didn’t want to hammer this in as I wanted it to be sort of a metaphor for life without being obvious about it. Looking back, I think I could have made it more obvious and plan better but hey, you learn from it.

I’ve published 91 posts and I’m still learning. This would be 92. One of the hardest parts I find about writing is to trim your favourite parts and ideas off for more coherence, conciseness and impact. Some days, I still struggle with that and I leave some parts or anecdotes in knowing full well it wouldn’t fit in terms of the larger picture. Either way, thank you to all of you that stopped by every once in a while. Few as you are, I’m always grateful that you stayed and found a connection to my feelings and stories.

Thank you to my girlfriend as well for being so supportive and always reading every single thing I post. If you haven’t noticed, she is in every single one of my post last year, mostly by design but really because of her love for me.

Last but not the least, thank you God for the gift of writing and the grace you continue to give to me.

Thank you.