My Words and I

Phil’s Next Stop is my ripe, overeager child that has just emerged into the world. It has grown and developed on its own in many ways disparate from and beyond my initial intentions, though it of course still needs and accepts my attentiveness and care. I do my best to nourish and cultivate it with positivity, honesty, and quality and in turn I am proud of these budding outcomes and thankful for those who help me raise it.

The content I publish here is new, written and reflected upon each week, but the place my words come from — my mind, spirit, experiences — has been developed and rehearsed over several years and continues to be refined with each passing day. This week, I thought I’d share how the words on this blog came to be, and why I now find myself writing in the way that I do. I hope this reads not as just another piece of writing about writing, but something far more personal— more visceral— than that.

About three, short years ago, I had a vague notion that I enjoyed writing. I thought of myself as someone who was “good at writing,” maybe even someone with a knack for it. I had always excelled in school writing assignments and academic research writing, and was a university writing tutor as well. I was 19 years young in the midst of a degree in Kinesiology. I was a research assistant in a physiology lab, tutoring in applied anatomy, and planning out my scientific journey through academics. I was on a path, promising in its own right, that used physics and biology as stepping stones, not literature and language.

And yet I strayed. I set a simple goal for myself:

“Write everyday.”

And that’s just what I did.

Though I did complete my science degree, I diverged more and more from the gizmos and gadgets and began diving into the world of words and humanities. I gradually immersed myself into that nebulous gray-area that loiters along the precipice of the black-and-white structure of science. I participated in research in the sociology department; I presented at a leadership conference and an education conference; I picked up a minor in philosophy. All the while, I was reading voraciously—a book or two a week—and I was actively fulfilling my goal of writing every single day: journaling, typing, personal essays, reflections. By the time I was 20 years old, the task became as ingrained and ritual as eating and sleeping—I wrote a haphazard 500 words on my very worst days, and an inspired couple thousand on my good days.

In spite of the blossoming relationship with my words, during those times I rarely ventured as far as actually calling myself a “writer.” The pieces I had written before my graduation were widely unpublished and primarily written for a private audience; whether it was an assignment for a professor or a peer revision or my own journal, most of my writing was scrutinized by few other than myself.

Nonetheless, for years I was accumulating those quiet, focused hours and word counts and lengthy, unread drafts. The majority of what I’ve written, those incipient words, remain unread today, and will likely continue to be as such. But those were formative points of departure for myself and my words to develop into what you read on Phil’s Next Stop.

Only since arriving to Hong Kong have I started to notice the fruits of my practice. I walk around with a more fastidious eye for my surroundings, consciously seizing small details that ordinarily (or, “ordinarily” for me as of two months ago) would go unnoticed, slipping away into eternity. I see my surroundings as a beautiful landscape awaiting a literary description—the environment and the stories and the commotion all irrefutably pregnant with meaning, awaiting the breath of life afforded by the happy mixture of adjectives and adverbs.

What I used to merely look at, I now try and see. I attempt to candidly discern what pierces my perception, inundating myself with the meaning and minutia of what’s immediately in front of me. Since my first post, it’s as if my world has been flooded—rejuvenated—with new combinations of colors and qualities that I simply did not think to see before. A passing exchange of hushed conversation, the motifs of a building, an indifferent countenance—certain pieces of my reality are highlighted, asking to be called upon like a young child raising their hand in class.

I’m thinking and looking—correction: seeing—more and more like a “writer” here in Hong Kong.

Each of my posts begin with a vague, ambiguous direction. I click away at the keys and arrange words into sentences within paragraphs. Along the way, I stumble upon an idea, and that is the direction I go about exploring. Sometimes I can map it out from this point, but usually—almost always—the words spin and convolute in their own, whimsical fashion, leaving me at a conclusion of their own liking, one that was unforeseen by me.

When I reread my words after I’ve penned them, I myself cannot tell exactly where or how I arrived at this or that point; my writing is as much of an exploration of myself as it is a public recounting of my experiences. My own words contain a wisdom separate from the limited knowledge I myself carry with me, and I only hope to listen and learn what my words have to teach me.

Here we are now at my eighth published post, eight weeks since launching Phil’s Next Stop. I have been as much of a witness to my own journey as you have. The presence of criticisms and feedback from a wide audience has pushed me to develop my literary voice more each week. Publishing to a public platform—where I’ve had far more readers than anticipated, and I am thankful for those who find this blog even vaguely worthwhile—has imbued me with the best type of pressure. I write to meet this inspiring, exciting pressure to publish for my readers and to continue this momentum that pushes me to learn and unveil new things about myself, my surroundings, and my words.

Though I am still hesitant to proclaim this, it feels even more wrong to deny it:

I am a writer.

Phil’s Next Stop is a result of my ‘where’ and ‘how’: where I find myself now—both geographically and spiritually—and how I choose to concentrate my efforts, passions, and intellect. As for my ‘why’, this is a matter I’ll have to continue exploring because, just as for many others, this elusive ‘why’ can prove difficult to find, maybe impossible.

But maybe—just maybe—my words will find it for me.