Taking stock
“As we move towards a new year, the urge to take stock grows ever stronger; arbitrary end points will do that. So I look to an 83-year-old and remind myself of my 2018 mantra: just try.”—Bim Adewunmi in the essay “Why I love Joan Didion” written for The Guardian
Except for a country and world that are careening toward populism and authoritarianism, 2017 has been kinder than the year before it. Yes, there were the exits of dear ones that continue to stab one’s heart, but there were personal milestones reached, an affirmation that one has tried mightily hard.
If this were a bullet journal, I’d put atop my list having met deadlines, give or take a handful of missed ones. For a freelancer, that’s saying a lot. I still wouldn’t trade full-time employment for the freedom of maintaining one’s own work hours and choosing the topics about which one wants to write.
This implies taking a “vow of poverty,” a phrase I’ve enclosed in quotes to mean one learns to do without a lot of luxuries one of which is a smart phone which others may consider a necessity.
Writing requires a lot of sitting. A downward spread of one’s buttocks is inevitable. This year, I took more frequent “standing breaks.” Sometimes I’d lift and bring down the pink, one-kilogram barbell, bought at an ukay-ukay stall in La Trinidad, Benguet, to the count of 10 or 20. Just to keep the arteries from clogging up.
The secondhand stationary bike I’d sometimes get up on broke down (this is where I hear jokes about my being overweight from my family of hecklers). It only needs to be brought to the bike shop to get going again. At this point I feel like sticking my tongue out at my detractors.
So much for mental and physical exercising. Let me move to what I used to call in my 20s “exercises in serendipity,” or not expecting “accidents” to happen while going about one’s normal day.
This year, these “accidents” happened while I was running my fingers through our bookshelves in search of no particular title. This is how, at the start of my leave of absence from teaching, I finished
reading assorted political biographies by people of different ideological stripes. It’s a genre of which I am not particularly fond. But reading through the books about Steve Psinakis, Edgar Jopson, Rafael Ileto et al. facilitated the writing of my own memoir of the Marcosian years
that was commissioned for an anthology for release in 2018.
While revisiting old diaries at the archival facility Ateneo Library of Women’s Writings, I was amazed at what I had chosen to record throughout the 1970s and 1980s. The details of life under authoritarian rule and some risks some friends and I took were enough to make the more prudent 62-year-old woman in me blanch. How many times I put my face on my palm while I reread what I had written.
While reviewing those old words, I realized that I must continue recalling and recording the minutiae of every day, not with an eye for future evidence of social history but as an important exercise (that word again!) in mindfulness and reflection. I think senior citizens owe this to the generations after us.
I can think of other things I still have the strength to do in 2018:
Swimming not just in a sea of words but in actual water to strengthen my arthritic knees.
Seeking out old friends I’ve lost touch with primarily because there are just too many distractions in this world (social media can be such a culprit).
Visiting those who are older than me and thus continuing the learning process.
Paying fuller attention when my grandchild nudges me to show her latest drawing, scribbled words, or discovery.
But in the meantime, let’s start with something very doable, like keeping a journal. The new year only means turning over a fresh leaf. To me there’s nothing more seductive than a blank page.
Elizabeth Lolarga is a freelance writer-editor and grandmother of one. She
authored “Catholic and Emancipated,” a collection of essays (University of Santo Tomas Publishing House).
