[Things that I would love to have undone (that I would not have done anyway)]

Suddenly, I got this strange urge to finish what I left behind. During winter break last time, when my roommates had gone back to Malaysia and Mamat went on a road trip, I occupied my time and mind working on several essays. It was one of the most productive periods; I penned down an essay that was about 5000 words long and until now, it is still not finished. I attribute that productivity to the emotional distress that I was having at that moment.

The Petronas Student Advisor did not reply my email of application of changing my study major, it was the 2nd time celebrating Aidilfitri without my family, and my grades for that semester were crap horrible. Furthermore, it was the worst Minnesota winter ever; outside the mercury dropped almost 20 below zero. I guess that kind of conditions really managed to kick me into my former hobby of doing creative writings. Equipped with ample time, reliable privacy, sufficient ideas, and proper dosage of motivation, I wrote until I feel asleep on the computer’s chair with my fingers still on the keyboard.

Among other things that I wrote was on the subject of the hopeless longing for lost childhood years. It was rather easy to be effusive on that because I do feel I have wasted my youth by being overly cautious about my future security, of whether I could get a really great job and start a fulfilling career and become wealthy and all. A lot of the sweetness of teen years I did not have the chance to sip its nectar because of that rather paranoid mindset of mine. However, I do not feel even a single grain of remorse that infects my past judgment.

I keep imagining that somebody would come up to me face to face and ask me on what have I done with my life as a youth other than struggling night after night, straining the muscles of my eyeballs, reading and chanting the contents of a textbook that looked like a Encyclopedia Britannica from afar. More worrisome, I wonder what my reaction would be then, on the moment of reflex of being asked. Would I just grin shamelessly and change the subject or stare at his/her eyes and say “Don’t bother, it doesn’t concern you”. (But what if it was Allah that asked?)

This urge is really killing me right now. Although now I do have the time to finish them, I am left barren without the other three. I could not write a thing without having a mug of black coffee next to me, but this habit is wrong and misleading. The product of that is not of mine, but of the caffeine. However, the lack of thereof would drive me to the brink of madness as the pulsing urge would counter react with the situation of having to leave things undone once again. Oh, how would I release myself from this torture?

Personally, I do not believe that ideas come in the form of a bang or that they travel in continuous flocks. A one that does is actually heaven-sent and you are the luckiest bastard alive for that. Simply put, you have to toil for them to come and most of the time, that toiling effort really makes your piece of work worthy of praise and admiration even though it is probably not at all worthy of mention for the Pulitzer. After considering all accounts, I thought of the possible logical reasons to why this enigmatic urge surfaces itself as of right now and haunts me by what I take my creativity’s pleasure the most. Is it of a subconscious origin, which tries to inform me of something? If it is, then what is the message and what relevance does it have to me now?

I do feel that whatever it is, it has done its job very well. This time around I may or may not be able to finish the things that I left behind. However, unlike the time constraint reason iterated before, I would say that no existing excuse could get me off the hook this time. It would be disgraceful to admit that a drought of ideas had had its draining claw on my skull or that I have lost my Midas touch that once had always mystified readers with its magic of riveting words and swiftness of rhetorical fluency. Blatantly and bold, I pompously pronounce deliberate procrastination as to why I abandon (again) the work on my essays, in the hopes that the bright sunny sky would invigorate me with motivation and the warm summer breeze would bring me those damned flocks of ideas.