I’ve always been…that I know

“Because I love painting. I have to paint. I have always been a painter, that I know.”

“A born painter?”

“Yes.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I can’t do anything else, and believe me, I’ve tried.”

How painful is it when the only thing you know how to do and love to do suddenly leaves you?

Just like when I couldn’t write. It’s like the light has gone out in my world. Thank God I was able to write today. Two stories. I’m myself again.

More about that later.

The dialogue above is from the movie At Eternity’s Gate and I can’t find it on Netflix. Probably Google has it on Google TV…Ah I just looked. It’s not available in my country. Based on the trailer, it seems like Willem Dafoe was born to play Vincent Van Gogh. He looked believable. He was so good in this that he received his fourth Oscar nomination for this.

So now back to this writer’s block…It took an enormous amount of willpower to force myself to write today. Promptly at 9 am, I started to tap on my keyboard. The most difficult thing to write is the first sentence. In journalism, it’s the lead. Once you’ve done with it, everything else will follow.

I also willed myself to write because I know I will get fucked up if I can’t push this story out today. I know I will have more trouble writing if I push it for another day. And another. And another. Until it gets so bad that I won’t be able to write for months.

Good thing I was already done with the story when I attended the call with our global editor in the afternoon. I don’t know why I had to ask about that thing that drives me nuts about the hiring when I knew the answer already. Still I asked. I should have known that it will still be the same—what do I expect? šŸ¤¦ā€ā™€ļø

It’s like I intentionally wanted to get hit by a train and watch the train wreck while squished between the wheels and the track.

I don’t know if there’s a light at the end of the tunnel.