I want to write more, and do other creative things.

But I haven’t found the time, energy, or even the ideas necessary to do so. Instead, most of my non-academic writing has been in the form of Facebook or Instagram comments and, sometimes, on TikTok videos.

Ever since the year began, I had an inkling that I would struggle through but also grow, and that’s exactly what’s been happening. This year, my beloved dog, Kiba, passed away at the age of 17 years, 7 months, 2 weeks, and 3 days. It has been nearly 30 weeks since she left and I am still devastated even to this day. I also adopted another dog, it was probably a selfish decision but my parents and I needed to show our love and affection to another creature to even begin to fill the void left behind by Kiba. I went through Hurricane Beryl in July, which left the region without power for over a week, but only for 4 days in my case, though I lost around $3,000 of medicine at the time, which temporarily risked my health as a result. I also lost my grandmother, my last-living grandparent, and applied to 4 different graduate programs since I felt the need to fulfill at least some of the hopes, dreams and ambitions that my grandparents had for me while they were alive and not experiencing a degenerative brain disorder. Because of this drive to fulfill my ambitions, I have been feeling perpetually guilty for needing time for myself, which is ridiculous.

Even as I write this right now, I feel guilty that I’m not, instead, studying for one of my classes (I recently began an MS in Data Science program) or working on a web development or web art project (things that I have been doing everyday as a hobby to feel like I’m exercising my creative juices throughout the week). I have the constant feeling that I’m not productive enough and, even as I had a week off of work, I’ve still been “grinding” and haven’t felt relaxed at all.

Maybe I need to temper my expectations for myself. Maybe I need to focus a bit less on school and work, and a bit more on my mental and physical health. Or maybe I just need to draw necessary boundaries for myself.

As I write this, I have a project that’s worth 35% of my grade that’s due next week and, while I have done the groundwork for organizing it, I haven’t (at all) done what’s necessary for me to organize it, which is something that I need to do soon.

I’m also “distracted” by my coding projects and, yes, some of them involve OpenAI projects suited to help users write traditional Filipino poems (called tanagas) or tailor their resume to a job description. These concepts and their results are pretty cool, at least to me, and I know that I need to stop myself from believing that a different form of productivity that doesn’t help with school or work isn’t actually worthwhile. By the way, my stance on AI is that, while helpful, their outputs should not go unedited and need to be placed in the proper context — something that only humans can do, at least at this point. When doing something that needs to be original, like writing poetry or making a resume, it’s always best that you including your original touch. So, if you decide to use any of these tools that I developed (if they’re active at the point that you see this article), please make sure that you imbue your own creativity.

So, with that said, today I’ve written this blog post (not AI-generated by the way because I’m very picky with my words and controlling my message), so at least that’s one thing that I’ve done, outside of school and work, that I have been meaning to do.

For me, it’s back to my assignments, and maybe a few projects here and there.

Originally self-published on my other blog: fornesus.blog.