I don’t know what’s wrong with me but I’m in a writer’s rut. I can’t bring myself to write this week and I have one analysis piece that I need to publish before the month ends (like tomorrow!!!) and another feature that is awaited by my interviewees. Productivity is half although my editing is still sharp; it’s just that I can’t write.

I need to get out tomorrow or else I will suffer from writer’s block. I will just sleep this off again. I need to be in a coffee shop for a change of scenery. Bo’s Coffee near my house probably and then I can transfer to Starbucks on the other side of the village much later.

I was like this in 2014 then after my gall bladder surgery, I resigned and signed on with my current company.

I can’t seem to put my finger in it why I’m having these productivity meltdowns more often. The seven-year-itch probably? Or lockdown burnout? I don’t know but I gotta cure this fast.

I don’t think I’ve had pork for more than a week now. I’ve been going vegetarian most days and like this one, I’ve had string beans in coconut milk and a fancy egg drop soup with leeks for dinner. I need to have more calorie-deficit days to make up for the food I consumed in my mom’s house when she ordered a lot of stuff to celebrate my birthday last Sunday.

Meanwhile, a few minutes ago my househelp asked me about Dekada ’70 (The ’70s), a novel by Lualhati Bautista. I told her it’s a fictional story of the Bartolome family set against a real historical backdrop–during Martial Law. I told her do not watch the movie, it’s better to read the book because the movie was watered down. She said she tried looking for it at National Bookstore because it’s an assigned reading for her Philippine Literature class. Right there and then, I bought the book off Shopee and within minutes I told her the vendor should be sending the pocketbook by Saturday.

I was delighted that her teacher is progressive enough to make her students read this.

I read this in high school and I think I wrote a paper about it for my Filipino class. It was one of the biggest eye-openers for me and since then I started researching about what really happened in those times. I read more books about it since it was a dark time for Philippine journalism as well. Of course, Martial Law was pivotal for my family too because this has shaped the politics of my parents. My mom was a member of Kabataang Makabayan (a student activist organization) whose members were imprisoned, tortured, and killed during that time. My father’s activism came in later but until his dying day, he was still affiliated with the reformist leftist groups (the breakaway from the the Maoist group of Jose Maria Sison).

We also did the Martial Law project for my former TV network and I was supposed to interview then Bangko Sentral Deputy Governor Diwa Gunigundo for this project but some personal matters took over and the interview did not push through. I hope I can do it soon for a special project. Anyway, Gov Diwa was imprisoned during Martial law when he was the editor-in-chief of The Philippine Collegian–the student paper of the University of the Philippines Diliman that openly criticized Ferdinand Marcos when nobody in mainstream media dared. My mom said even non-UP people were grabbing copies of Kule (Philippine Collegian’s nickname) when Diwa was EIC because “it was the only one publishing the truth at that time; everything published by others was propaganda and lies.” When Diwa and I once chatted, I told him he probably knew my uncle, my father’s cousin, Nick Atienza, who was also imprisoned at that same time at Fort Bonifacio (which is ironically the posh BGC now) and was the secretary-general of Kabataang Makabayan at that time. Diwa was shocked. He shook his head. “Nick was just three cells from me. I could hear them (military) torturing him every night, bashing his head like a troso (lumber) against his cell wall. It’s a miracle that he lived through that. Nick suffered the most horrible torture ever known among the Martial Law detainees who had lived,” Diwa said.

Nick Atienza had trouble walking for the rest of his life because of the shrapnel still embedded in his legs. My parents recommended to him my father’s orthopedic surgeon to help him with his problems. When my dad’s doctor learned who Nick was and how he obtained his injuries, he waived his professional fees. Since Nick was also a faculty member at UP, he probably had other fees discounted as well because he was treated at UP-PGH.

So I had a teacher for my Social Science 2 (Great Political Theories) in college who proclaimed that it’s not true that Ferdinand Marcos committed the crimes that people had thrown at him and there were no human rights violations during that time. I barked at my teacher and told her, “So what can you say about an uncle of mine who was tortured at Fort Bonifacio?” I always had heated debates with this teacher who always cited The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli, justifying Marcos’ actions during his 21-year rule (“the end justifies the means”). She failed me because she was just too annoyed that I challenged her lies. When she did that to me, I went straight to the department chairman and complained. Instead of taking the removal exams, because I didn’t want to deal with her anymore, I took again that class under a different teacher. That cost me my cum laude. I was running for honors then.

I was expecting my parents to berate me for failing. But my father said: It’s better to fail than to accept lies being fed to you. It’s better to stand up for what you believe what is right.

And this has been my guiding principle ever since.