Making the obvious choice
I was always going to be a writer. I don't know what else to do with myself otherwise.
“What would you be doing if you weren’t a writer?”
Catherine, my boss, asked our team this over lunch. After thinking about it for a while, I said I’d be an academic: a teacher or researcher. Or maybe a producer for a show.
“I’d never given it much thought before,” I said. “I don’t know what I’d be doing if not writing.”
Having grown up with my English teacher grandmother, my playtime was all about stories and words: Playing make believe, writing in diaries, and using ref magnets to spell out new vocabulary. I would be filling up reading worksheets and activity cards leftover from Nana’s tutoring sessions. After afternoon mass, we’d watch Jeopardy then Wheel of Fortune. There were cabinets filled with books of all grade levels for me to read.
In school, I was a monster at the SRAs, reading at least two levels ahead of the stipulated reading age. I would read all sorts of books at Scholastic Book Fairs—and if I scored well enough on a test, I could buy myself a book. I wrote silly fanfiction, made terrible poems, and even roleplayed for a spell.
It seems that reading, writing, and storytelling came naturally to me in ways that hard sciences never did.
Sure, I wanted to be a doctor until I took my first biology class and had to dissect a frog (something I did not do because I’m very, very scared of frogs. Instead, my groupmates let me take pictures of the process. Thanks guys!). And yeah, I got a kick out of solving Punnett squares and DNA codons. But I don’t think I was ever really into actually becoming a doctor and putting in the work to getting to that point. I wanted to be a pathologist because I thought it sounded cool. I wanted to become a dermatologist because I heard they get rich. I was bad at chemistry, slept through physics, and sucked MAJORLY at math. By the time I was in my sophomore year of high school, all ambitions to pursue a career in the sciences had been washed away and replaced with “maybe I should go to law school.”
(Law school is another topic in and of itself. My mom is still trying to convince me to give it a shot.)
I think becoming a writer was what I was bound to do, a natural course of action.
I don’t say that in a dramatic “there’s nothing else I wanted to do and I was fated for this job” way, but in a “It’s obviously what I’m decent at so why would I do anything else?” way. Going to school for writing, becoming a student journalist for four years, taking it up as a career—these were logical next steps. I’m reaping a harvest made of putting all my eggs into one basket.
Calling myself a writer hasn’t been very cool nor am I going to get rich doing so. But regardless of how impressive the job title or paycheck was going to be, I don’t really see myself doing anything else.
It makes me “highly specialized”. It also makes dealing with burnout a pain in the ass.
That’s why I’ve been on this “rediscovering/reviving/repairing my relationship with my craft” thing for so long now. Am I really a writer if I haven’t written an essay in years? If all I’ve been creating are press releases and social media copy, am I really A Writer? Is all I have to show for myself now a portfolio where every document has the words “PROPERTY OF [CLIENT]”? With so many of my friends published in books, magazines, and news sites, why haven’t I found the same drive to do the same for my own career?
It’s a slippery slope to traverse down, one that can veer very quickly into self-hatred, impostor syndrome, and jealousy. And I know I have a hand in it. I had the chance to contribute to two culture and lifestyle publications the last two years, but I found myself racking my brain for story ideas only to come up empty. The one time I did reach out with pitches, I was informed that the contact person was no longer with the publication.
Making the obvious choice for my career, becoming A Writer by profession, has been good to me because the growing pains and learning curves haven’t been too drastic. But it also makes shifting gears scary. This is all I’ve known for so long, and I’ve gotten pretty good at it, so changing it up feels like being asked to dissect a frog again—only this time I’m holding the scalpel.
I also end up wondering if turning the thing I liked doing into my job was really worth it. “Do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life,” the cliche goes. But what happens when the thing you love starts feeling like an obligation, rather than something that brings you joy?
For the past few months, I’ve been working on figuring out how to bring joy back into my writing. Whether it’s writing for fandom, making silly threads on Twitter about mango-flavored things, or creating ridiculous, senseless fictional universes via chat, I’ve found that the only way to rekindle the delight and excitement I once had for writing as a hobby—or anything for that matter—is to take it away from monetary gain.
That’s why, admittedly at the behest of the people I work with, I’ve been so adamant against selling things I bake. That’s why I say I’m always “recipe testing” things. Because I feel that the bar is immediately lower when people don’t come to me with an expectation of products worth shelling out money for. It’s why I have no issue giving semi-fail (in my eyes) batches of cookies away for free. When people like what I make, it feels good and makes me happy. That’s more than enough satisfaction for now.
I want to get back to the same place with my writing—where I can do it for myself and not be held to a metric. Where my world won’t end just because I abandon a draft into the graveyard of my notes apps. When I can write about things for the hell of it, just because I want to, regardless of how well it turns out, removed from the standards of perfection and getting things right every. single. time.
Again, echoing back to this newsletter’s welcome entry, maybe that’s what Alphabet Soup will become. A place to play, grow, experiment. To write in one go, one sitting, and hit Send before I can overthink myself off a cliff and back into coming up with nothing. A place where I can imagine, make believe, ideate. A place where the obvious, natural choice starts feeling again like a decision I’m happy to have made.
Sampler Plate:
A shorter Sampler Plate because I’ve been consuming the same things this past week to cope with work stress lol
EAT: Mango Yoghurt Parfait Magnum
I love mangoes and this limited edition Magnum hits the spot on particularly sticky and hot days! It’s tart from the mango yogurt (which tastes like Nestle yogurt) but the white chocolate shell with crumble pieces adds a nice, sweet crunch.
LISTEN: “Supernova” by aespa
My girls stay serving. I love how fun the creative direction has been for this era! Center 1 you deserve your flowers for this alone. Kinda sad I won’t be seeing them on tour AGAIN TT______TT aespa pleaaaaaaase come to Manila T____T