From private journal entry 23rd Feb 22

I'm on the verge of admitting my defeat. I should say that I'm embarrassed of myself.  To people who have been very supportive of my career as writer. This, especially people who gave assistance when I needed it. I'm ashamed that there's no growth from me so I feel like retracting myself from them. I haven't been able to write anything since December last year. It's really unplanned as I enjoyed writing. The problem is it was natural for me to just not doing it, and it scares me.

Maybe it's my saving? I'm cringing to know that I can only sustain my life for another couple of months. It's always like that. "I have only couple of months," and then something happened and there it is, another couple of months. Magic how this entity I called God, still support me somehow. (Though I won't deny, with all the porn and bad words, I'm certainly a sinner). From time to time, I picked up a book to read to see if I could get inspired, but it doesn't have any effect. I feel like not doing much. Not sure if it's because I'm dying, I hope not. I been having blood on my shit for almost 9 days now. Think there's something broken with my intestine, or perhaps it's the Omicron. I had this kind of stuff three times already during the pandemic. Not sure how to get rid of it, but it'll gone perhaps.

I have told my family I have no money, so they should halt themselves if they want to ask for it. This kind of condition has happened before. It was 2010-ish. I was completely alone, and had no one. No support and I was at a strange city somewhere in Java. I stayed there for a while. And I haven't been able to pay the rent and my neighbor knew it. He was devoted Christian so he tried to convert me, seeing me being queer, he prayed all the time and played that religious songs in my ear. He once told me, "God creates the crow, we see that bird is no good, and what its role in this life, they're meaningless. But still God feeds them, so you don't need to worry." That's his word. I said, "Crow eat corpse." So, my last resource, though I'm not very talented on it, and though I'm not very attractive, I logged on to some site and offer my self if anyone interested. (This story I should write if I ever make something roman a clef again). I was surprised there were three quotation, asking for price. All came from older men. I don't mind, in fact I found them charming. But two of them were just quite suspicious, couldn't quite made their mind.  Perhaps married curious men. But the last one was quite firm. I won't tell you my price, but it was cheap. And he was very excited and said he just wanted to help me out with my situation, but I could tell he's just a pervert and it scared me a bit. I had met a lot of pervert and though I, mostly, managed to act cool, always intimidated. So it was arranged, date and place and how, I was ready.

It was a day before it happened that I somehow received some money, Exactly $100. Enough to pay my rent and a month of sustenance. That's a royalty I received from my novel I've written the year before. I thought my writing had saved me. Long story short I got a job as a teacher the next month, so I moved to another province and smirked to that experience.

I think I might be in that same situation. I have tried to applied jobs, but no luck yet. I opted out to work on the cruise ship again since I have to pay too much to get on board, and really thinking of doing some cleaning service job instead if I can find any. I don't want to think too much. I want to do some menial jobs. I think my spark has long gone and if I had to stand under a red light every night to jerk some dude off, out in the parking lot for some money, I actually would. But we can't really sell sex nowadays. People willing to do it for free and the access to it is easy. I don't know how next few weeks gonna be, I will write here more soon. 

(© Tintin)