Why I wanted to be a writer: Story of my life.

I’ve always wanted to be a writer since I was in grade school. My fascination with the written word grew as I became a voracious reader, thanks to my mom who worked for a university, she can borrow an endless supply of reading materials for me.

I had an early start in reading. I clearly remember that as soon as I learned to read, everyday after school, I proceed to a neighbor’s barber shop to scan the pages of Bulletin Today for the funny pages. While I got hold of copies of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, Ellery Queens’ Ellery Queen series, Earl Stanley Gardner’s Perry Mason, The Hardy Boys Series, and back copies of the Readers’ Digest, I got really hooked up on comic books. I was so into reading them that I can be considered a “komiks” addict. Everyday for months, I would gobble up pages of comics from the pinoy serials to DC and Marvel comics copies. If today’s neighborhood arcade games are threatening to destroy the education of some students, “komiks” almost destroyed mine.

I don’t know how my mom did it but she succeeded in getting my interest to reading textbooks one year ahead of my grade level. From being a “komiks” addict who was almost expelled due to absences, I became a bookworm. As a result, I guess, I graduated grade school with honors and was offered three high school academic scholarships.

In high school, my mom supplied me with stacks of back copies of The National Geographic (some are still in black and white photos), I was also swamped with Current Executive’s Digest. I read them all with gusto, but I liked the pocket books’ fiction better: I read most of Frederick Forsythe’s, Robert Ludlum’s, and John Le Carre’s novels, among others. My writing gods were Rudyad Kipling, Edgar Allan Poe, O’Henry, and several other short story writers whose names I completely forgot. I was brought into the “Age of Reason” by Jean Paul Sartre and by Leo Tolstoy (Anna Karenina; War and Peace); Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Alexander Solshenitshin (Inner Circle, Brothers Karamazov, Crime and Punishment—I forgot who wrote which but I can still remember the melancholy the worlds of these novels’ characters brought me.) On my way to Luzon to study in U.P. Diliman on a scholarship, I was reading Abraham Maslow’s (I forgot the title) book about “man being intrinsically self-transcending.”

Before I was able to finish my B.A. Communications Research course in U.P., I made a name as the youngest media professional in my province in the south. Starting as a news writer, I became a station manager and the chapter (region) chairman of the Kapisanan ng mga Brodkaster ng Pilipinas, (KBP) the country’s professional broadcasters’ association.

I am now retired (I’m just 42) and I wish to pursue my lifetime wish of writing. Unfortunately, this essay answers a requirement that asks for 500 words only—otherwise, this could have sprung an endless stream of nostalgic words reminiscent of that beautiful, pure, and vigorous existence of youth. Talk about a life... long faded into a hazy beautiful dream.

I believe my finally shifting to a full time writing career would restore and link me back to that lost chapter of my life.