A shot from my the window of my brother’s condo. Taken by my brother (thanks, kuy!).

introducing me: another brief history

bianca
4 min readOct 21, 2020

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I published my first story on this account, which I call my mind palace, nearly two years ago, and haven’t published a word since. A lot has happened since then, and so an explanation of all these is, I think, due.

First of all, I started this account as a form of leisure. And when I say leisure, I don’t use the word lightly — in it I include all its philosophical underpinnings, especially those seen in the writings of Josef Pieper (I think, if you continue to read my stories, we shall see a lot of him).

In his book, Leisure, the basis of culture, Pieper asks:

“Is there still an area of human action, or human existence as such, that does not have its justification by being part of the machinery of a “five-year plan”? Is there or is there not something of that kind?…can the world of man be exhausted in being the “working world”? Can the human being be satisfied with being a functionary, a “worker”? Can human existence be fulfilled in being exclusively a work-a-day existence?”

Pieper goes on to quote Aristotle, who says ““We are not-at-leisure in order to be-at-leisure.” For it is leisure, Pieper writes, that keeps us human.

At the time I started this account, I was in the thick of writing my thesis. I was consuming an ungodly amount of coffee every day, getting up early and staying up late, and trying not to drop any of the other responsibilities that come with being a person.

If I remember right, three to four breakdowns preceded the making of this account. At the beginning of the semester, my thesis writing professor pointed out that I might be burnt out. He was trying to excite any form of academic kilig* in me, which is normally extraordinarily easy, but couldn’t get me to “geek out,” as he would say. The eagerness to discover and to learn is at the root of all research (or at least, it should be), but I couldn’t seem to find any of this in me. Alongside my thesis, I had many projects and duties to attend to. I went from task to task, on autopilot. I met up with friends, listened to their concerns, encouraged them, and helped them when they were down, all the while desperately wishing that I, too, could hear the words I often comforted friends with. It was too much. I felt utterly emptied out, completely spent. I talked to one of the school guidance counselors about a concern regarding the student arm of the guidance office, but ended up breaking down instead. And to top it all off, I was told that I had symptoms of depression and anxiety, and started taking anti-anxiety medication.

In other words, I didn’t feel human at all.

I talked to different mentor figures in my life, and one or two of them suggested that I try and get back in touch with my own thoughts and feelings, and with the things that I loved doing. Since my mind was full of thoughts anyway, I decided to try to empty all my different ponderings and musings into the stories you will find in this account.

…the operative word here being “try,” since this is only the second story I’ve published.

There are actually many works sitting in my drafts folder, and which I hope to show to the world soon. But before doing so, I wanted to contextualize all the works you will find in this mind palace.

I’d forgotten the “something else” that should exist in human life besides work, which should be the reason we work at all. The two years that have passed since the first entry in this mind palace have been a long journey on the road back to being a functioning human being again.

I hope this mind palace will be for you, as I hope it will be for me, a reminder of this “something else.” I hope you remember that being tired is part of being human. I hope you make some space to breathe, to just be. And I hope you remember that wonder at the beauty life brings each day is part of being human, too.

This is how I want to see the world. I hope that through these words, you’ll be able to see what I see, too.

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*kilig = quite a difficult Filipino word to translate — it refers to a certain feeling of excitement, usually evoked by something of a romantic nature, but it’s a feeling that can be evoked by something one cares deeply about in general.

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bianca

An aspiring historian and teacher working through her MA and her MDD.