You’ve always felt different from a young age. You grew up being told you weren’t enough. These would be the voices of a permanent gloom, a cloud that would follow you for the rest of your life.
Yet you try outrunning your cloud. You pick up self-help books. You play motivational podcasts on repeat. You adopt the billionaires’ morning routines. But nothing changes. You’re still you. Only now you take cold showers and meditate as soon as you wake up.
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A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away. My pre-all-black days.
I’ve always worn a black T-shirt for as far as I can remember. Scroll back through my Instagram account and you’ll probably catch the rogue grey or white, but I’ve always leaned more toward black clothes.
I have to credit my genesis story to the series Californication. Hank Moody was a true inspiration to the budding writer that was yours truly, and so I adopted the fictional character’s wardrobe, as well as the philosophy of a personal uniform.
But then came the next level—the day I decided to wear all black. Every day.
Continue readingEver since I joined the publishing industry, I aspired to be an editor. I just needed the writing skills, and I had a decent serving of that.
I pictured myself catching typos and lecturing writers on how they could improve their style. I’d be perched at my desk, approving or rejecting pitches like I was swiping on Tinder. Every once in a while, I’d throw out words like ‘pagination’ or ‘masthead’.
Turns out, I had totally misjudged that role. As a deputy editor for a lifestyle magazine, I get a first-hand look at what my boss does, and I’m quickly learning the many reasons why I might not want to be an editor, ever.
The first reason? I’m bad at dealing with people. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Here are some of the other ‘interesting’ things an editor needs to do.
Continue readingIdeas are about confluence. I believe it’s Neil Gaiman who said that. I can’t come up with quotes like that. That’s because I don’t typically insert ten-dollar words like confluence into my everyday speech.
And that’s despite the fact that I live in Kuala Lumpur (which literally means muddy confluence in Malay), but I digress.
Anyway, in my spare time, I watch sketchbook videos so I can fancy myself an artist. That’s when I came across this talented Singaporean’s video and found myself upon a confluence.
Chroma Moma’s (who shall henceforth be known as CM) thoughts on art mirrored mine on writing, and that was how this post was born.
Continue readingMy entire life has been based on sweating the details. I’d been a hairdresser, then an auditor, then a writer. And those vocations have been all about that centimetre, that one decimal, that one letter.
So it didn’t come as a surprise that I felt obligated to pursue my hobbies the same way.
That meant sticking to Ryder Carroll’s bullet journal guidelines to a tee. Or picking only one specific word processor to rule them all. Heck, I got into backpacks once because I decided to travel with only one carry-on, no matter the duration or location.
But life is never linear, and the danger of distilling everything to its barest essence is that we end up solving problems that don’t exist.
It’s like that time I got into fountain pens. Suddenly, longhand was a task fit for only one instrument. To hell with gel pens, or pencils, or fineliners. Never mind the fact that I was filling out an immigration card. Or that I was assigned to a rough trip through the forest. When I was into the hobby, it was fountain pens or bust.
Once I got over my elitist tendencies, however, life magically became easier. Because why fret over the pen-ink combo when all I wanted to do was write a grocery list? And why was I spending all my time and money aiming for a grail that didn’t exist?
We’re all different, but if you’re the type who thinks they need rigidity, only to come up with a thousand different ways to be rigid, then perhaps you’re more flexible-prone than you think.
And to you, I say: Learn to let go.
Journal in a notebook, then write your next few entries on your phone. Succumb to your hyper fixation on pencils, then embrace gel pens when you’re ready. Go hard on the weights, then spend months doing nothing but cardio.
Because sometimes we just need to embrace the chaos, so that we can find the stillness within.
Your Friendly Malaysian Writer 