The Silence

"Hello Darkness my old friend, I've come to talk with you again..."

It has been a while since I last had the urge to write, not through a lack of things to talk about, but more... shall we say... through lack of a catalyst. Writing for me is a tricky art and a very fickle mistress that no matter how many thoughts flood my brain at any given moment, if I fail to find that one magic word to start my sentences, then they all come crashing to a halt. Sometimes that one tiny word is the proverbial snowflake on my thoughts that causes the avalanche of paragraphs to cascade through my eager fingers.

It also doesn't help that I am normally afflicted with attention deficit disorder whenever the desire to write gnaws at me. Even now, while I am writing, ideas for an excel template I have long planned to make makes its way to me, as well as the urge to review my previous posts, and to revisit blogs that I have long lost contact with. I think sometimes I need three more of myself just to get through all the things that I want to accomplish. Maybe cloning would work. Or maybe a Naruto-style shadow clone technique would do the trick. Or maybe I'm reading too much manga lately for my own good.

We also lost internet connection for a couple of weeks, and those weeks were trying times. That was the time I realized how dependent I had become of the internet. It was frustrating to be stuck at home, with no means of connection and with my mind reeling of things to do, and things that I ought to do but am not willing to perform just yet. I realized that I had become addicted to the internet as my favorite form of procrastination in the same vein that I was addicted to television some years back. It affords me an excuse to not do something that I should have done in a long time because I am still busy doing "something" even though what I am actually doing is basically... well... nothing.

When the internet was reconnected, though, I had already created a new habit of doing nothing that I wasn't tempted enough to log back into my online connections. It was liberating in a way, but rather quite lonely, to be frank. It's a good thing that I am quite comfortable with my loneliness and the quietude that it brings. It also has a certain power -- the fact that I am capable of logging back in, but chose not to -- a power that, upon reflection, is akin to that feeling of empowerment anorexics feel when they choose to starve themselves: it feels good for a while, but is ultimately detrimental in the long run.

"No man is an island." I know that, and have exulted that mantra to some people in the past in hoping that they would reconnect. It would be quite foolish and hypocritical of me if, after I proclaim that gospel, I myself would come to shun it, and try to establish my own isle of isolation.

Anyway, I am back online, and back to my verbose self once more. And hopefully it would stay this way for quite a spell; it's very unhealthy for thoughts to rot inside one's head.

"...And the vision that was planted in my brain still remains, within the sound of silence."

CREDITS: Sound of Silence by Simon and Garfunkel