By Atty. Antonio P. Pekas
The past four years or so I have been side-lined from work by various illnesses, I always tried with determination to get back to work. Everytime I felt a little bit better, I reported to the office and pretended I could do things. Almost always, however, something showed up in my face to say I was engaged in wishful thinking. Even coming up with a decent paragraph worth calling a composition was a big struggle. Which meant I could not think in a coherent way regarding whatever problems we were facing in the office. Whenever that happened, I could not even face people as I would feel so tired and would end up lining our office seats to serve as a bed for me to sleep on. Then upon waking up, I would harangue my wife to order for delivery some lunch, dinner or merienda. Luckily, something always came up for us to work on that we that we could charge for and the money would go straight in payment for what we ordered. Talk of never ending blessings.
So I was able to reach this point. And the other day, I felt again a little bit better. So I decided to test how far that “feeling better” can go. I decided to try to go to SM City on my own. It was the first time in a long time. That was also to have some exercise no matter how little and to see If I could indeed venture out to the world without collapsing somewhere. Well, it turned out my legs were still wobbly, but I was able to see the second hand bookshops to prove such a venture could still be viable. Then I went to a classy coffee shop to have some tea. Contented with what I accomplished that morning, I went back to the office. There, I concluded, yes, I can start slowly venturing out to the real world.
So here I am, trying to stitch some words to come up with a column story for this coming issue of the ZZW. Am I unreasonably forcing the issue or myself? I have to do this because as one friend told me, “matay ka nga dagos no awan ar-aramidem.”
This is also an effort to overcome my tendency to sleep in the office after lunch or whenever I liked it. And I also have to keep on trying to come up with better articles, not those awkward or “gravelly” ones during my sickly days. Somehow, I have to achieve some smoothness or even awe inspiring ones.
I should keep on trying.
As I found out, when one is in the pink of health, writing would be smooth. Words would continuously come tumbling down and when the bottom of the page is reached, the whole thing would appear to have been well-planned or designed. Even the culminating sentence would appear so appropriate.**
