Landing on My Feet, Maybe

Listening to: Baby by Os Mutantes

Close to a month has passed since the Eid of 2026, since the days of deprived sleep and nightly rituals and prayers. The effect still lingers; post-Ramadan insomnia is very much a thing. The schedule my wrecked bio-clock has come to terms with nowadays is this: sleep at around nine or ten in the evening; wake up at one or two in the morning. I stay awake until sunrise. At 5:00 A.M., I go down and wake the boys; we head to the store and arrive no sooner than 5:30 A.M. The pre-opening schedule includes boiling water for our coffee and sweeping, while I count yesterday’s profits—allocating, saving, and deciding what the store needs most that day.

I have experienced three Ramadans while running the store, and each year seems heavier than the last. With the charities and aiding the poor the religion of Islam commands of us during the Holy Month, we end up spending more than we should. The store suffers; the store bleeds. What is left is the burdensome but necessary task of tending to its wounds, nurturing it until it can thrive again.

I have few acquaintances and no friends in Small Town. I rely on video calls and emails from friends to help me with advice and surviving the hours. These interactions get fewer as the months roll on. I am sure I lost a friendship last year; I think I have lost two this year. It is only now, as I am writing this, that I realize losing three friends is very alarming a number.

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Sometimes social media gets it right. Sometimes the algorithm helps out and, for a moment, one forgets its sinister effects. A video was presented to me on how Black Americans survived financially during the 1960s. The ingenuity of the systems they adopted relied simply on trust. They achieved this through the sheer will to survive. Out of these techniques, I have adopted the “envelope system.” Every night after we close the store, I immediately save and record a few pesos. I place them in envelopes—labeled ‘savings’, ‘emergency’, ‘repairs’, ‘school’, etc.—and get rid of them quickly by stashing them into the drawer. This is no longer discipline; this is survival. The most effective reason I have not wasted that money is the fact that one dumb impulse buy could leave me destitute. It would ruin me. It would severely affect my boys as well. I suppose that must have been exactly what Black Americans of the past thought as well. And when their old age came, they were able to live debt-free. It is also that thought, that hope, that sustains and allows me to battle on.

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One hot afternoon, the image of Joan Didion’s documentary poster manifested so clearly in my mind that I halted my studying to re-watch the film: The Center Will Not Hold (2017). I hear Didion’s voice. She drawls on, reading her decades-old essays that are still magical and powerful. My favorite is On Keeping A Notebook because I love keeping notebooks. If there is one thing I love that I have criminally neglected, it is writing. Watching the film again, I somberly promised to get back to the craft. That is why I am typing this. As I check my draft, I realize the disparity in skill between myself and my writing friends. Needless to say, I could not even conceive of comparing my writing to Joan Didion’s. What I upload will most likely look like a draft, no matter how I edit. But it is better to press that publish button and hope for the best than to remain in a state of inaction.

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Another YouTube video was presented to me: The Psychology of Elder Millennials. It explains the predicament and personality of millennials such as myself, those born between 1981 and 1986. The video highlights how we were sandwiched between Generations X and Z; how the internet was not something we were born with, but something introduced to us after we already had a foundation of life. In other words, with the coming of the digital age, we have had to manufacture a second life. This brought clarity to my plans for my Substack. I never wanted to post “serious” essays here. I wanted to post, no matter how long or short, “Blog Posts.” What I originally wanted was a blog—a real blog like Blogspot, WordPress, or Tumblr. The embryos of today’s media, those digital domains that defined us and gave us vehicles of expression so astute that most of us were never able to let go. That is my intention: my Substack is WordPress in a different place.

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Law School is manageable now, though I might seriously fail one subject. Final exams are less than a month away, which means my classmates are lessening their social media presence and dedicating hours to their final requirements. I should be doing that now; I would have done it a couple of weeks back had it not been for the post-Ramadan financial drought.

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The brother of my store boys has finally arrived. He shall stay with us for two months to help out. With his arrival and the slow return of my store’s health, I am finally able to take care of myself.