I’m sitting with a laptop on the kitchen island at home. For the past 30 minutes, I was busy with my alumni’s design works. Next to the laptop are two notebooks: One is titled GOALS 2023 and the other is my daily journal. Both notebooks don’t have lines.
Then there’s the mug. Coffee. Black, no sugar. Half full. I french-pressed it with ground beans bought from the supermarket. There’s the bowl that I used to eat oats. There’s honey, raisins, french press from IKEA and two small plates stacked on top of each other on the island. I’m just too lazy to bring them to the sink.

In the background, the smart speaker is playing Jazz for Sleep from Spotify. Google played it for me as told. Above my head is the 4-speed fan. Fairly quiet, or maybe with a little drilling sound. If she’s around, Aisyah would walk over to the kitchen from her favourite sofa in the living room and turn off the fan. With or without people in the kitchen. She would turn it off as if no one was there.

I can now feel the stiffness of my shoulders and neck. I moved my fingers to the trackpad. I stretched my neck a little. The music from the speaker is still playing. Slow kind of jazz, like a lullaby. I then hunched a bit. The high stool where I’m sitting is nice for a short quick meal, but not the best for working/typing. But this the best place to sit, second to my reading room and my bed and the toilet and the porch.

I leaned back a bit, taking my hands off the keyboard. I looked at the watch. It’s 9.42 am. My next appointment is at 12 noon. Lunch with some friends. When you’re a freelancer, you have no tribe. Your old buddies can be your bouncing boards. But seldom talk about heavy or deep stuff. There’s just too much catching up to do so we tend to keep it brief and nice. But we can continue where we last time left off.

The Coway machine purred. Could be the cooling mechanism.

This is my first attempt to emulate what I read from Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones, page 114.

Just write whatever you see and feel.

Now you’re writing.