Letter to an unknown friend

Hi DW,

I don't know you personally. In fact, I don't even know your name. You probably don't know mine either, and to be perfectly honest I wouldn't be writing to you like this if not for the rather exceptional circumstances I stumbled upon these last couple of days.

Let me elaborate: you see, brainjuice is confessedly a rather lazy, certainly inconsistent blogger. The only times she really posts blogs is when she has some time at work (guiltily), also partly because she does not have a computer at home. It's been a month since she last blogged, or had the time to blog because she was moving offices and jobs and didn't have the time to even read.

So coming back to the whole blogging affair I found myself deprived shockingly of your blog... and had to do a bit of sleuthing to realise what happened. Because I'm out of the blogging circuit for so long, I certainly have no idea what re-minisce was referring to either in his blog about you... and now that your blog is shut there is no way for me to really know what's been happening in your life.

Here's what I find mildly disconcerting about this whole blogging business: although I really do not know why you have chosen to shut down "amongst other things", and although I was very sad to find out about it, I also realise that my desire to read your blog is a kind of intrusion in itself. Who am I but a passer-by stopping by the roadside, agape at the spectacle of another person's private life?

Yet, you have undoubtedly laid bare your thoughts, your heart and your soul on your blog for other people to read them. And me, I do the same. We all do when we blog.

Let's put aside for a moment all that has been said about what makes writing beautiful. As formerly a teacher of Literature I can tell you that to a great extent beauty is subjective. Even in the simplest of prose there is beauty.. read Gertrude Stein and other American transcendentalist writers. To me, you do what you do well. The beauty in your writing is that you are so honest and unafraid in laying down life in its most stripped down form - the unadorned experiences of heartbreak, insecurities, and observations. And because of that, I do find myself reading your daily musings.

Maybe I do so as a bemused spectator, but so what? I do so acknowledging that you are an individual in the flesh entitled to your emotional response to life and the curve balls God throws you in life. The disembodied voice may never be associated with a human face that I can recognise if we were ever to rub shoulders in a crowded MRT train or on the bus. But I recognise the voice. It's something I have seen, or heard, or felt somewhere in someone else. Or in a book I read a long time ago.

Don't stop writing. I honestly don't know why you are - if you are as what other bloggers suggest - depressed. But this is no reality TV - and I am no fan of intruding on other people's private lives. I don't expect to really ever understand what exactly you are going through as though it is any business of mine to begin with. But I just thought I'd drop this entry to you to let you know that you do deserve better. I'm in total agreement with Re-minisce on this point.

Can I offer a word of encouragement from the Bible too?

21 When my heart was grieved
and my spirit embittered,
22 I was senseless and ignorant;
I was a brute beast before you.

23 Yet I am always with you;
you hold me by my right hand.
24 You guide me with your counsel,
and afterward you will take me into glory.
25 Whom have I in heaven but you?
And earth has nothing I desire besides you.
26 My flesh and my heart may fail,
but God is the strength of my heart
and my portion forever.

-Psalm 73: 21 - 26

A little prayer, said in contrition, is lifted high on angels wings and is whispered in the ears of Him who watches over you. A drop of tear, shed for a christian brother, heralds a thunderstorm of God's compassion.

New Work.

A proud announcement, although tremulously made, seeing how little time I may have to actually make new entries in this blog...

In the long break since the last post, I have changed jobs. Sadly, I cannot be referred to as teacher any longer, at least for the next two years of my stint here at MOE HQ.

While my counterparts are well into their first week of the school holidays, I continue in my christian suffering as I wake up every morning to trudge my way to work.

Interestingly, at least 2 readers have written into TODAY this week alone complaining that teachers are paid way too much to enjoy this much "holiday". What bothers me about the one reader who wrote in to condemn the practice of paying teachers to enjoy so many days of "paid holiday" is that he himself is married to one such a teacher! I just don't get it! Then again, who am I to assume that there is domestic peace in every Singaporean home?

Anyhow, back to the topic. Today marks my second day at the headquarters, in a division that will for the good of not just myself but the rest of my new colleagues be kept unnamed in this blog... suffice it to say that I've been doing lots of reading and lots of writing!

Happiness!

As an entry level officer though, it was more than a little disheartening to see my first assignment returned to me pock-marked with changes and corrections by the supervisor. Yup, my confidence in my writing abilities has dipped a fair bit this afternoon alone, so it may be another while yet before I venture another entry in this blog.

This is one new reality I need to get used to: gone are the days when my MIGHTY purple pen exercises complete tyrannic sovereignty in defacing the scripts of the students' creative pieces. Gone are the moments of sadistic pleasure derived from penning caustic comments in the margins of badly written essays. Today, and for the rest of the days to come, I switch positions from perpetrator to victim, from victor to vanquished, from teacher to learner.

If you are reading this, do spare a moment.... and say a little prayer for me!