Netnet Camomot I’VE been waking up early for more than a month now. So, it’s true--an early morning is possible once you’re used to it. If it’s 7 am, and it’s a weekday or Saturday, and you’re still in bed, the conscience starts to pepper you with, You should be out of the house by now! Only Sundays have an excuse. It’s Sunday, time to sleep, read, eat, repeat. It’s the early morning wake-up call that will hopefully make those eyes surrender to dreamland by 9 pm. If you stay awake beyond that, it’s called bilar -- by the time you’ve been up and about for 12 hours, the body starts sending warning signals to please slow down already. The eyes droop, the shoulders sag, and the minute brain shrinks to the size of a pea. That’s why whenever someone asks me if I’ve finished doing whatever it was that I’m supposed to be doing since July, my favorite answer now is, Busy ang life. The working day now starts at 10:30 am or later but writing is on the moment I’m awake, for everything, including dreams and nightmares, is a source of ideas that feed the writing. But there are topics I’d rather not write about, since I feel they’re not for public consumption but for my eyes and ears only, although the things I do write about may shock some people sometimes. Better that than all people at all times, eh? So, that part of the day before the start of the working day now begins with facing the morning traffic which means traveling for 30 minutes, a length of time that may infuriate the madlang pehpohl who have to rush to work, but that gives me time to write the intro to this column. By the time I arrive at my destination, I add more to the intro unless I happen to be seated with people who love to talk and who am I to say, Talk to my hand? With all the talk and activity that could last till 10:30 am, I have to text our Editor-in-Chief Herbie Gomez that “I’m writing pa,” but without telling him that there’s more talking than writing. But I gotta feeling he knows. By 10:30 am when I’m home, that’s when I can finally focus on writing. By 12 noon, my tummy growls for lunch but the column has to be finished and e-mailed first otherwise Herbie will text me with, Column? For last Saturday, though, at 11:17 am, it was, “Net, musta?” I wanted to reply with, I’m fine. But I’m sure that’s not the answer he was looking for. Hehe. Herbie, by the way, has been writing again. Finally, it’s about time! Cong Corrales and Bency Ellorin have also become our neighbors here in the opinion pages. Writing is like food. Can’t survive without it. How I wish I can have reading as its better half but I’m still on page 102 out of the 311 pages of Cheryl Strayed’s “Wild,” the book that I began reading weeks ago. It remains on the bedside table, waiting to be read again. There are many other books, some bought years ago, but still inside cabinets, also waiting. This year would have been the time to read for me but there’s this responsibility I said yes to and the commitment will last till June 2016 yet. I wanted to finish everything by March 2016 and have the turnover in April or May but a recent development hints I’ll be working till June, so, work, we must. There’s this one particular goal that I wanted to achieve by the end of June 2016. When I made that one promise last July, I didn’t know then how I would get there. Since the whole world responds when you release something to it, the response did arrive last Oct. 15, and it’s now possible for that goal to become real. I will reveal it once it’s achieve na achieve so you can help me maintain it forever and ever. Meanwhile, this column will not be achieve na achieve unless it sees print. So, better e-mail this to Herbie, now na, while my LSS--last song syndrome--is hovering over “hula, hula hoop, hula, hula hoop.”